Massachusetts US attorney resigns day before DOJ ethics investigation ends
Rachel Schilke
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Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins announced she would resign from her position the day before the Justice Department released a report from a monthslong ethics investigation detailing multiple violations.
Michael Bromwich, Rollins’s attorney, said on Tuesday that Rollins plans to submit a letter of resignation to President Joe Biden on Friday. Bromwich said Rollins would make herself available to answer questions “after the dust settles and she resigns,” according to the Associated Press.
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“She is optimistic that the important work she started will continue but understands that her presence has become a distraction,” Rollins’s attorney said.
Her resignation came the day before the inspector general’s office released a report detailing the results of an investigation that it opened in November. The investigation focused on several instances of possible ethical violations, including one in which Rollins appeared at a fundraiser in July 2022 for the Democratic National Committee and met first lady Jill Biden.
The report found that Rollins “mingled with the guests” and stood in the same “receiving line as the other fundraiser guests to meet Dr. Biden.”
“Rollins’s interaction with Dr. Biden was identical to those of the other fundraiser guests whose primary purpose for being at the event was to get in line and meet Dr. Biden. She also posed for photos with the event hosts and guests, as well as a U.S. Senator, after meeting Dr. Biden and before leaving the event,” the report stated. “Rollins told us that she believed she had complied with what she understood was the ethics advice. As described in this report, the facts do not support Rollins’s claim.”
The report determined that Rollins attended a “partisan political fundraiser without approval from the Deputy Attorney General, or her designee, as required by Department policy.” Rollins tweeted in July that she “had approval” to meet the first lady and left the event early to speak at two community events. However, the report stated that she disregarded “ethics advice.”
“Her attendance was contrary to the ethics advice she received before the event that gave permission for Rollins to meet and greet with Dr. Biden separately from the fundraiser but did not include approval from the Deputy Attorney General, or her designee, to attend the fundraiser itself,” the report stated.
The report also found evidence that Rollins violated ethical standards by attempting to swing an election by assisting “Ricardo Arroyo with his Democratic primary campaign for Suffolk D.A.” Rollins offered Arroyo advice on how to handle sexual assault allegations levied against him during his campaign and provided media outlets “negative information” about Kevin Hayden, Arroyo’s challenger, according to the report.
The Justice Department concluded that Rollins “falsely testified under oath” when asked if she gave information to the media outlets about a possible criminal investigation into Hayden.
“The evidence demonstrated that at a critical stage of the primary race, Rollins brought her efforts to advance Arroyo’s candidacy to the MA USAO, when she used her position as U.S. Attorney, and information available to her as U.S. Attorney, in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to create the impression publicly, before the primary election, that DOJ was or would be investigating Hayden for public corruption,” the report stated.
The inspector general’s office also looked into Rollins’s use of her personal cellphone to conduct official business, a hot-button topic of ethics investigations in recent years, and a paid trip to California from an outside group.
The trip to California was for CAA Amplify, the annual meeting of entertainment, business, and political figures run by Creative Artists Agency, a leading talent agency based in Hollywood. However, federal regulations dictate that Justice Department employees are not allowed to accept payment for travel.
Rollins told the inspector general’s office that she “did not seek any type of ethics advice or review as to the appropriateness of having a nonfederal entity pay for her travel expenses to attend this event.”
“Rollins stated she believed at the time that the relevant policies and regulations contained an exemption for ‘preexisting documented relationships,’ which Rollins said meant that because she had a ‘previous relationship’ with the L.A. Agency for ‘many years prior to becoming the U.S. Attorney,’ she was not required to seek any type of ethics approval for the trip,” the report stated, adding that Rollins violated the Federal Travel Regulation by accepting payment from nonfederal groups without prior approval.
“The potential regulatory and ethical violations implicated by Rollins’s conduct could have been easily avoided had Rollins advised her staff of both the true purpose of her travel and her intention to accept nonfederal payment for certain expenses and sought ethics advice,” the report continued.
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The U.S. attorney was also under investigation by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, a federal watchdog agency. The agency was investigating whether Rollins’s attendance at the fundraiser violated the Hatch Act, a law that limits political activity by government workers. The status of that investigation is unknown.
Rollins became Massachusetts’s top attorney in January 2022 after serving as district attorney for Boston and the surrounding areas. She and her team oversaw the investigation into Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified Pentagon documents over Discord.