Patterico's Pontifications

5/17/2023

Russian Propaganda TV Loves the Durham Report

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:23 pm



Keep spewing that Russian propaganda, you stupid morons.

You are total suckers promoting evil. You disgust me.

Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Resigns Amid Ethics Questions

Filed under: General — JVW @ 3:05 pm



[guest post by JVW]

Yesterday NRO had an article on the impending resignation of Biden-appointed United States Attorney for Massachusetts, Rachael Rollins, a controversial figure who ascended to her position only after Vice President Kamala Harris broke a tied confirmation vote in the Senate. It turns out that opponents who warned us of the extremist ideology, gross partisanship, and dubious ethics of Ms. Rollins had it exactly right:

Massachusetts U.S. attorney Rachael Rollins plans to resign following multiple federal probes being opened into her appearance at a DNC fundraiser alongside Jill Biden last year.

[. . .]

Last year, the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), an internal watchdog that probes fraud, abuse, and other violations of the DOJ’s policies, opened an investigation into Rollins — an unusual move given her high-ranking law-enforcement position. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, another watchdog, is also investigating her.

[. . .]

Inspector General Michael Horowitz is also looking into Rollins’s use of her personal cellphone to conduct Department of Justice business, which raises security concerns. Furthermore, the Massachusetts U.S. attorney is being probed for a trip she took to California to speak at an entertainment-industry gathering. An outside group paid for Rollins’s trip despite the fact Department of Justice employees are not supposed to accept payments for travel. Rollins was instructed to pay back the group.

Today the Office of Special Counsel chimed in, and it only got worse for the Bay State attorney:

Rollins, who will resign this week after it became clear the two governmental offices investigating her would release their reports imminently, leaked non-public DOJ information to a reporter in an effort to influence a local DA race and then lied under oath about it — behavior the Office of the Special Counsel termed “one of the most egregious Hatch Act violations that OSC has investigated.”

[. . .]

Both reports [the OSC as well as the Inspector General] detailed Rollins’s effort to influence the 2022 Suffolk County District Attorney election in favor of her preferred candidate, Richard Arroyo. Rollins actively supported Arroyo and acted as a de facto campaign adviser. On multiple occasions during the campaign, Arroyo suggested Rollins’s office might announce an investigation of Kevin Hayden, the incumbent and Arroyo’s rival.

The OSC reports that Ms. Rollins made at least three attempts to spread the rumor that D.A. Hayden was about to be investigated by the Department of Justice. When Mr. Hayden defeated Mr. Arroyo despite meddling from the U.S. Attorney’s office, Ms. Rollins sent a profanity-laden email message to her defeated ally suggesting that Mr. Hayden would soon pay a price. She then contacted a Boston Herald reporter and sent in a copy of a contrived memorandum from her office recusing them from an investigation of Mr. Hayden, leaving the newspaper with the strong impression that an investigation by the DOJ was forthcoming. The Herald naturally published the leaked information. When interviewed by the OSC about her meddling, Ms. Rollins allegedly lied about her involvement. (I write “allegedly” because Ms. Rollins implausibly claims this defamation effort was undertaken by her staff without her knowledge.)

This story dovetails nicely with my post from yesterday, because Ms. Rollins is another government figure whose significance appears to have been her importance as a “first” rather than demonstrated experience or competency in the role. Her distinction as “the first black woman to hold this position” is mentioned in the lead paragraph on her official U.S. Attorney’s Office webpage, so that fact is obviously of tremendous value in Biden World. I’m not suggesting that Rachael Rollins was named to the position solely because she is a black woman — no doubt her hug a criminal and fire a cop outlook, so popular among the progressive legal elite these days, played a huge part in landing her the role too.

One of the clear priorities of the Biden Administration has been to placate various factions of the fractious and freaky Democrat caucus by implementing a policy of quotas and set-asides for a number of jobs in government, and then trying to pass it off as casting a wide net in the name of diversity. But when this monomaniacal fixation yields major incompetents in key position such as the Vice-Presidency itself, it’s obviously counterproductive. Previous Democrat Presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama certainly valued having various races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations represented among their appointments, and even Republicans such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump aspired to bring in supporters from all walks of life. But these crazy times combined with the utter empty-mindedness of President Biden and the gross cynicism of whomever is pulling his strings has turned “diversity” into a fetish, and it has given us an unambiguous Quota Cabinet heavily staffed with mediocrities and incompetents. Yet they wonder why people’s faith in government continues to drop.

– JVW


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