A corrupt ‘progressive reformer’ goes down in flames
Byron York
A CORRUPT ‘PROGRESSIVE REFORMER’ GOES DOWN IN FLAMES. Back in 2021, President Joe Biden fought hard to win Senate confirmation for Rachael Rollins to become the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts. Rollins was the district attorney of Suffolk County, which includes Boston, and she had become notorious by pledging not to prosecute many crimes. Early in her term, she published the “Rollins Memo” that listed 15 crimes in which the “default is to decline prosecuting” — that is, in which her office would not allow its attorneys to prosecute unless a supervisor gave special permission.
Here is the list: 1) Trespassing, 2) shoplifting, 3) larceny under $250, 4) disorderly conduct, 5) disturbing the peace, 6) receiving stolen property, 7) minor driving offenses, including operating with a suspended or revoked license, 8) breaking and entering into vacant property, 9) wanton or malicious destruction of property, 10) threats excluding domestic violence, 11) minors in possession of alcohol, 12) drug possession, 13) drug possession with intent to distribute, 14) resisting arrest when the only charge is resisting arrest, and 15) resisting arrest if other charges are on the list of nonprosecutable offenses.
It was a recipe for urban disorder, all done in the name of criminal justice reform and addressing “structural racism” in the criminal justice system. But supporters, and many in the media, praised the “historic” nature of Rollins’s arrival as district attorney. She was, the stories noted, the first black woman to serve in the job. Coming in, she promised to “move now to make sure that overwhelmingly black and brown men aren’t disproportionately impacted by the criminal legal system.” The no-prosecute crime list was part of that effort.
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Rollins’s definition of justice seemed more in line with liberal politics than with justice. Indeed, a page on the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office website was headlined, “Meet Rachael Rollins, Suffolk County’s Progressive Reformer District Attorney.”
The results were predictable. “In 2020, the first full year in which her policies were in force, Boston’s violent crime rate surged, drug overdoses in Suffolk County rose, and murders skyrocketed by 38%,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who led GOP opposition to Rollins’s nomination in the Senate.
On the other hand, Biden was so impressed with Rollins’s performance that he nominated her to be the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts. The White House praised Rollins as a “historic first,” the first black woman to be nominated as U.S. attorney for the state.
And then the trouble began. Most U.S. attorney nominations are so noncontroversial that they sail through the Senate. They begin in the Judiciary Committee, where they are routinely unanimously confirmed by a voice vote. But Republicans saw Rollins, the district attorney who promised not to prosecute criminals, as a threat to the rule of law. Rollins, they resolved, would not roll through the confirmation process without opposition.
“Republicans have allowed President Biden’s other 15 U.S. attorney nominees across the country to go through committee with a simple voice vote,” Cotton noted in a floor speech in December 2021. “We rarely have record votes on U.S. attorneys in the Senate. In fact, I think it’s been 28 years. It’s also true that Rachael Rollins is so radical that she is without precedent as a nominee to be U.S. attorney.”
So for the first time in 28 years, the Judiciary Committee held a roll-call vote for a U.S. Attorney nominee. The result was an 11-to-11 tie. Rollins’s nomination then moved on to a final vote in the full Senate. At the time, the Senate was evenly divided, 50-50, but Democrats controlled because the White House was in Democratic hands and Vice President Kamala Harris could break ties in the party’s favor. That is what happened with Rollins. Her final confirmation vote was a 50-50 party-line tie. Harris then broke the tie for confirmation, and Rollins became U.S. Attorney on a 51-50 vote.
Republicans warned Democrats that they were buying trouble. “This is a vote you are going to regret,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said to Democrats. Now, Cruz’s words have come true.
On May 19, after just one year and four months in office, Rollins resigned when two investigations, one by the Justice Department Office of Inspector General and the other by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, outlined extensive misconduct. Basically, the reports showed that Rollins abused her power for political purposes in the supposedly nonpolitical position of U.S. attorney.
Rollins wanted to influence the election for who would succeed her as district attorney in Suffolk County. The Democratic primary for the job — the winner would run unopposed in the general election — featured two candidates, Ricardo Arroyo and Rollins’s interim successor, Kevin Hayden. Rollins supported Arroyo. According to the inspector general report, Rollins tried to smear Hayden, first by leaking false information about him to the press and then by leaking secret Justice Department documents.
The inspector general report said Rollins assisted Ricardo Arroyo with his Democratic primary campaign for Suffolk D.A., providing him campaign advice and direction and coordinating with Arroyo on activities to help his campaign. Rollins’s efforts to advance Arroyo’s candidacy included providing negative information about Hayden to The Boston Globe and suggesting where the Globe would look to find more information. The evidence demonstrated that at a critical stage of the primary race, Rollins … 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 the Justice Department was or would be investigating Hayden for public corruption. These efforts included, but were not limited to, Rollins trying unsuccessfully to convince her First Assistant U.S. Attorney to issue a letter that would have created the impression that DOJ was investigating Hayden and, when that effort failed, disclosing non-public, sensitive DOJ information directly to a Herald reporter before the primary election. Then, after the Herald did not publish the story before the primary election and Arroyo lost to Hayden, Rollins disclosed additional information to the Herald to damage Hayden’s reputation while he was an uncontested candidate in the general election.
The report went on to say that Rollins later “falsely testified under oath during her inspector general interview when she denied that she was the federal law enforcement source that provided non-public, sensitive DOJ information to the Herald reporter.” Text messages proved that it was her. Investigators also concluded that Rollins “lacked candor” when she testified about other aspects of the matter.
Serious as that was, it was not Rollins’s only problem. The inspector general also looked into Rollins’s attendance at a July 14, 2022, Democratic Party fundraiser featuring first lady Jill Biden. When Rollins received an invitation to the event, staff in the U.S. Attorney’s Office were surprised. It was not the practice for U.S. attorneys even to be invited to such political events. But Rollins wanted to go. Her staff and ethics advisers told her repeatedly that she should not attend. But Rollins insisted.
Finally, they came up with a plan in which Rollins would go to the home where the fundraiser was being held and meet Biden outside before the event began. That way, Rollins could say she did not attend the fundraiser. A legal counsel advised Rollins not to go inside and not to “provide remarks of any kind, or discuss policy or legislation on July 14.” The bottom line, the adviser said, was that Rollins would be allowed “to meet the first lady and then leave.”
Rollins went to the fundraiser in a government car. Then she went into the house. She talked to other guests. She moved to the front of a receiving line to meet Jill Biden. Then she talked to more guests, including Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). After about 20 minutes, she got back into the government car and left. In other words, she attended the fundraiser in precisely the way her advisers had warned against.
When the Boston Herald reported Rollins’s attendance, she falsely claimed that she had permission to go to the fundraiser. This is what the inspector general concluded:
Rollins attended a partisan political fundraiser without approval from the Deputy Attorney General, or her designee, as required by Department policy, and 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 … to attend the fundraiser herself. We also found Rollins’s efforts to blame her staff for her own ethics failures deeply disturbing and contrary to her own independent responsibility as U.S. Attorney to hold herself to a high ethical standard and exercise sound judgment.
Investigators found lots of other ethics violations, including Rollins accepting two free tickets, valued at $350 each, to a Boston Celtics basketball game and accepting $2,000 in travel expenses from a California sports and entertainment company.
When the investigators’ reports came out, Rollins had no option but to resign. She claimed she was doing so because she had become a “distraction” to the work of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. But her situation was more than a distraction. It was a serious blow to Biden, who chose her for the job; to Senate Democrats, who confirmed her; and to progressive politicians, who saw great things in her future. “It’s a stunning downfall for Rollins, who was praised by powerful Democrats and seen as a rising progressive star when she was nominated for the post in 2021,” the Associated Press reported.
In the end, the episode gave some grim satisfaction to Republicans who are to stop Democrats’ move away from the enforcement of basic criminal laws. “I warned Rachael Rollins was unfit to serve as a U.S. Attorney,” Cotton tweeted when she left. “Now she’s resigning in disgrace. Good riddance.”
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