Soros-backed Federal Prosecutor Rachael Rollins Resigns in Disgrace

COMMENTARY Crime and Justice

Soros-backed Federal Prosecutor Rachael Rollins Resigns in Disgrace

May 22, 2023 7 min read

Commentary By

Charles “Cully” Stimson @cullystimson

Senior Legal Fellow and Deputy Director, Meese Center

Zack Smith @tzsmith

Senior Legal Fellow, Meese Center for Legal Studies

George Soros-backed rogue U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins is seen in Boston on Jan. 13, 2022. Barry Chin / The Boston Globe / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

Rollins resigned right before the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Special Counsel released devastating reports.

She fallaciously claimed that not prosecuting crimes resulted in lower crime rates, repeating ad nauseum that “data and science” backed up this nutty approach.

Her lasting legacy, however, will be the list of Hatch Act violations and ethical lapses U.S. attorneys should never commit.

Rachael Rollins, the George Soros-backed rogue U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, announced earlier this week that she is resigning as the chief federal prosecutor for the Bay State.

Rollins resigned right before the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Special Counsel released devastating reports outlining her serious ethical lapses and lambasting her for them, which were predictable given her tawdry and bizarre behavior when she was Boston’s district attorney.

In the letter from Henry Kerner in the Office of Special Counsel to President Joe Biden outlining some of these lapses (to put it charitably), Kerner wrote that Rollins’ violations of the Hatch Act (the law prohibiting federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity on government time or with government resources), “are among the most egregious transgressions of the Act that OSC has ever investigated.”

The inspector general’s report also catalogs Rollins’ bad behavior. That report is 155 pages long and includes emails, texts, and other hard evidence of Rollins’ myriad ethical (and potentially criminal) acts throughout her tenure as the U.S. attorney.

Among the many violations noted in the report, the inspector general found that Rollins acted functionally as a campaign adviser for a Democrat running for Suffolk County district attorney while she was the sitting U.S. attorney; Rollins secretly disclosed a nonpublic DOJ letter about an ongoing DOJ civil rights matter to a Boston Herald reporter; and, in June 2022, Rollins “secretly disclosed another nonpublic DOJ letter about a different ongoing civil rights matter to a Boston Globe associate editor.”

The report also stated the inspector general received information alleging that Rollins:

(1) As U.S. attorney, solicited 30 free tickets from the Boston Celtics for local youth basketball players to attend a Celtics game, accepted two tickets for herself, and used a subordinate employee to help coordinate the event, contrary to ethics advice.

(2) Accepted nonfederal payment of travel expenses on two separate occasions without advance authorization and without advising her office of both the true purpose of her travel or her intention to accept nonfederal payment of certain expenses.

(3) Called a live local radio show and discussed a MA USAO (Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s Office) criminal case from which she was recused.

(4) Participated with federal, state, and local elected officials from one political party in a press conference in response to the public reporting of a draft opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

(5) Routinely used her personal cell phone to send text messages to her staff, including on matters relating to official DOJ business.

(6) Continued to accept donations to her Suffolk D.A. (district attorney) campaign account after she was sworn in as U.S. attorney.

These summaries, although damning, don’t convey the gravity and depravity of her actions. We encourage everyone to read the report, especially her emails and texts, for themselves. The inspector general’s investigators also believed she lied to them during their investigation and appropriately referred her for criminal prosecution to the Justice Department. Inexplicably, the Justice Department declined to prosecute her.

Rollins is the fifth Soros-backed rogue prosecutor who was voted out of office, declined to run for reelection, or resigned in disgrace in the last few months. Others include Chesa Boudin, who was recalled in San Francisco; Marilyn Mosby, who lost her primary in Baltimore; Kim Gardner, who resigned in disgrace earlier this month in St. Louis; and Kim Foxx, the first Soros-funded big-city rogue prosecutor, whom he first funded in 2016.

Foxx was ostensibly forced to announce she would not run for reelection next year in Chicago by the Democratic machine that desperately needs to disassociate itself from rising crime rates ahead of its national convention next year in the Windy City.

Rollins’ fall from grace is further proof that the left-wing rogue prosecutor movement itself is starting to show some cracks at the seams, despite over $40 million in direct campaign spending from Soros and his friends and hundreds of millions in indirect spending to support the pro-criminal, anti-victim cult. Still, it’s necessary to remain vigilant because scores of rogue prosecutors remain in office.

In our upcoming book, “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities,” we rip back the curtain on this radical rogue prosecutor movement, which itself emanates from the prison abolitionist movement. We tell true crime stories that, but for the radical, pro-criminal policies of these zealots, would not have happened.

Rather than shying away from the movement’s failings, Soros has embraced them and recently wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal bragging about financially supporting many of these rogue prosecutors.

Rollins was a controversial candidate for U.S. attorney and was only elevated to the post after Vice President Kamala Harris broke the 50-50 tie vote in the U.S. Senate to confirm her.

Some people, such as Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., warned that she would be a disaster in that important position. After all, when she served as the local district attorney in Boston, she issued a policy memo laying out 15 crimes you could commit on her watch without fear of prosecution. This essentially gave a green light to criminals to destroy property, break into and enter residences, possess drugs to distribute, resist arrest, commit many driving offenses, and more.

And just like other Soros-backed district attorneys, including those inspired and enabled by the rogue prosecutor movement, she fallaciously claimed that not prosecuting crimes resulted in lower crime rates, repeating ad nauseum that “data and science” backed up this nutty approach.

We contacted the researchers who did the “study” for her office, and they told us that they could not provide the underlying data they received from Rollins’ office because they had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. When we finally received raw data from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, it was largely useless, and thus, it was impossible to recreate the study.

Earlier this month, after St. Louis’ abysmally incompetent district attorney, Gardner, announced that she was resigning, Foxx, her friend and fellow rogue prosecutor from Chicago, gave a quote to a friendly reporter at The Intercept, saying that Gardner essentially was targeted for removal because of her race and her gender. Foxx, defending Gardner, said, “I don’t think we’ve spoken enough about what black women have had to endure here.”

Never mind her incompetence.

The Intercept reporter, trying to make the story look like mean Republicans ganging up on “reform prosecutors” across the country, sought a quote from Miriam Krinsky, the head cheerleader (aka executive director) for the ironically named “Fair and Just Prosecution” group. Krinsky, the chief apologist for the rogue prosecutor movement, said, “We haven’t seen more traditional prosecutors … and certainly traditional white male prosecutors in the past, put under the kind of microscope that has been applied” here.

Well, that’s because traditional prosecutors, regardless of their skin color or political affiliation, have tended to prosecute criminals, treat victims with respect, and uphold the law.

But Krinsky, Foxx, Gardner, Rollins, and the rest of the radical rogue prosecutor movement view the criminal justice system through race-colored glasses and buy into the false claim that our criminal justice system is systemically racist. The truth is that their policies don’t work and, in fact, create more victims. And the sad irony is that young black men tend to be disproportionately victimized by violent crime—meaning that the more crime increases, the more young black men are victimized.

Unfortunately, they ignore—or just don’t care—about this sad fact. Instead, they are blinded by their ambition to “reimagine” a criminal justice system where they get to ignore entire categories of crimes, water down felonies, ignore victims’ rights, and keep as many career criminals out of prison as possible—all in the name of social justice.

But in that blind ambition to push their radical agenda, we find their tragic character flaw. Like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, who was willing to do anything to become king, the political actors in this criminal justice tragedy have, and ultimately will, stumble because their policies and ideas don’t align with human nature.

Rollins should go down in history as one of the worst U.S. attorneys in modern times. She violated the public’s trust, and her violations of the Hatch Act and other rules and regulations applicable to United States attorneys should be studied for years to come as a quintessential example of what not to do.

When Rollins was Boston’s district attorney, she was proud of her infamous list of 15 crimes you could commit in Boston. Her lasting legacy, however, will be the list of Hatch Act violations and ethical lapses U.S. attorneys should never commit.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

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