Tag Archives: Todd Rokita

Is Rokita Even Worth The Pixels?

What is so depressing about living in Indiana these days is the dismal quality of our state government.

I’ve frequently posted about what the late Harrison Ullmann accurately called “The World’s Worst Legislature,” a body currently waging war on Indianapolis and higher education, among other travesties.

I actually had some residue of respect for the governor, who I thought was an “old kind” of Republican caught in the vice of MAGA world, but that respect evaporated when he sent Indiana National Guard troops to the southern border to bolster Texas’ performative pissing match with the federal government.

The embarrassment that is our current legislature is largely attributable to the gerrymandering that allows lawmakers to choose their voters, but that excuse is unavailable when we consider statewide candidates like our Attorney General, Todd Rokita, about whom I have posted more frequently that his sorry career warrants. (Put “Rokita” in the search bar, and multiple examples will come up.)

Rokita’s efforts to out-MAGA the MAGAs in his party have been so egregious and unethical that he was sanctioned by Indiana’s all-Republican Supreme Court.

As Paula Cardoza-Jones (a former member of the Disciplinary Commission) has noted,  Rokita just can’t stop lying:

In 2022, Attorney General Todd Rokita spoke repeatedly and publicly about his investigation into complaints about a doctor who provided abortion services in Indiana to a 10-year-old rape victim who was unable to obtain such services in Ohio.

As a result, Rokita was accused of violating a statute that requires complaints about a doctor “be held in strict confidence until the attorney general files notice with the [Medical Licensing Board] of the attorney general’s intent to prosecute the licensee.”  Ind. Code § 25-1-7-10(a) (“Confidentiality Statute”).

On September 18, 2023, the Disciplinary Commission (“Commission”) filed a Disciplinary Complaint in three counts (“Complaint”), Cause No. 23S-DI-00258, alleging violations of the following Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct (“Rules”):

(1) Rule 3.6(a)—making extrajudicial statements with a substantial likelihood of prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding;

(2) Rule 4.4(a)–using means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person; and

(3) Rule 8.4(d)—engaging in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice based on his violation of the Confidentiality Statute.

Members of Indiana’s highest court agreed on the probity of those allegations, only disagreeing about the severity of the sanctions to be imposed. Rokita subsequently issued misleading pronouncements about that conclusion and was again reprimanded by the Court.

You might think being continually slapped down would teach him a lesson, but–despite his focus on Indiana schools–Rokita is clearly incapable of being educated.

As the Capital Chronicle reports:

A new dashboard unveiled Tuesday by the Indiana Attorney General’s Office makes public more than two dozen allegations of “potentially inappropriate materials” in Hoosier schools, like critical race theory materials and gender identity policies.

But numerous local officials told the Indiana Capital Chronicle they weren’t made aware of the complaints and contend the allegations were not properly vetted before the portal went live.

Attorney General Todd Rokita referred to “Eyes on Education” as a transparency tool that intends to “empower parents to further engage in their children’s education” and provide “real examples of indoctrination.”

The portal accepts submissions pertaining to K-12 classrooms, colleges, universities and “other affiliated academic entities in Indiana.” But it is unclear how, or if, they are vetting the accuracy of the allegations.

Given what we know of Rokita, it is highly unlikely that these allegations are being “vetted” at all. His “explanation” makes the politics of this new “portal” abundantly clear.

“As I travel the state, I regularly hear from students, parents and teachers about destructive curricula, policies or programs in our schools,” Rokita said in a statement, adding that the portal allows Hoosier parents to “view real examples of socialist indoctrination from classrooms across the state.”

“Our kids need to focus on fundamental educational building blocks,” he continued, “NOT ideology that divides kids from their parents and normal society.”

Several districts have pointed out that portal submissions were out of date or simply inaccurate–but of course, none of those responses appear on the portal. Representative Ed Delaney notes that–among other issues– public education matters are outside the purview of the Attorney General.

This effort to score political points with the most rabid of the MAGA cultists isn’t simply a dishonest ideological stunt; it exceeds the Attorney General’s jurisdiction.

But hey, it’s Todd Rokita–the “lawyer” who has no respect for the Constitutions of either the U.S. or Indiana, or for the rule of law.

Please vote so that I won’t have to waste pixels on this sorry excuse for a public servant after November.

Comments

Feeling The Heat, Todd?

Can you stand one more post about Indiana’s infantile Attorney General? (I wouldn’t keep commenting if he didn’t keep pooping in his mess-kit…)

A lawyer friend sent me a copy of Rokita’s latest filing in the ongoing soap-opera tracing responses to his ethical lapses and his fury about those responses. After reading that pleading with some amazement, I have to agree with the Indianapolis Business Journal’s characterization of it as “bombastic.” (And then some…)

According to the IBJ:

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita submitted a new and bombastic filing on Wednesday accusing the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission of caving to outside pressure in a “political melee,” saying it could no longer give him fair treatment.

“The Commission needs to be disentangled from ongoing politics driven by political commentators. If the Commission is not cordoned-off from the political stage, then its meetings need to be made fully public…” the filing read.

As my lawyer friend noted, the pleading was Trump-like, with Rokita lashing out at those he clearly perceives as his enemies : an amorphous “Left” and liberals in general, of course,  but also “the establishment,” a nefarious Disciplinary Commission and its staff, a former Dean of IU’s Maurer School of Law, a reporter for the Indiana Lawyer, and others who have ever dared to suggest that he was in the wrong.

Clearly, they’re all out to get him, and it isn’t fair!

Many of the filings and decisions of the commission are private, unless the Indiana Supreme Court decides it would be in the public interest to publicize them — which the commission petitioned for in his disciplinary case. Rokita said he doesn’t oppose a motion to unseal the conditional agreement, so long as all of the deliberations and meetings related to him fall under the same “extraordinary circumstances.”

In his conclusion, Rokita said that his “style and content” were not grounds for the Commission to discipline him as a lawyer.

An excellent example of that “style and content” followed. Here is Rokita’s concluding paragraph (in which he continued to refer to himself in third person).

Respondent is vocal, aggressive, and successful regarding policies important to Hoosiers. He speaks in a manner that the ‘Establishment’ abhors. The content of his conservative message offends the Left, if not Liberals,” the filing continued. “… His press release (in November) made clear those facts in his combative style, but nothing written rendered his Affidavit false or defied the Supreme Court.”

His “combative style” reminds me of a couple of my kids when they were three-year-olds…

For those who’ve (mercifully) missed the preceding tantrums, the IBJ offered a helpful backgrounder:

In a November split decision and public reprimand, the Indiana Supreme Court found he had violated two of the Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers:

They said Rokita’s comments constituted an “extrajudicial statement” that he knew — or reasonably should’ve known — would be publicly disseminated and would prejudice related legal proceedings.

They also said his statements had “no substantial purpose” other than to embarrass or burden Dr. Caitlin Bernard. The misconduct stems from his televised comments about Bernard, an OB-GYN who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio and was later disciplined before the Medical Licensing Board for discussing the procedure publicly.

In an interview with Fox News commentator Jesse Watters, Rokita called Bernard an “activist acting as a doctor” and said his office would be investigating her conduct.

However, both Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Christopher Goff dissented in a 3-2 split ruling, saying Rokita’s punishment — which included $250 in court costs — was too lenient.

Following the reprimand, Rokita shared a lengthy and unrepentant statement defending his “true” remarks in which he attacked the news media, medical field and “cancel culture.”

Shortly after, the disciplinary commission filed to unseal Rokita’s conditional agreement, saying, “Respondent’s actions flouted the authority of the Court, called into question the sincerity of Respondent’s assertions to the Court in his Conditional Agreement and affidavit, and caused damage to the public’s perception of the integrity and justness of the attorney discipline system…”

In his response, Rokita actually accused the Disciplinary Commission of knuckling under to “political pressure.” After all, it couldn’t possibly be the case that Todd Rokita had stepped over a line.

There’s more, of course, all along the lines of “how dare the Indiana Supreme Court and  Disciplinary Commission respond publicly to my ethical lapses? How dare a commission set up for the sole purpose of sanctioning unethical lawyer behavior sanction me? Don’t they understand how important I am?”

I think the word is “self-important,” and I think our pompous and delusional Attorney General is beginning to feel the heat.

Comments

Someone To Blame

One of the most memorable scenes from any movie I’ve seen was one that occurred toward the conclusion of the 1995 film An American President. During a press conference, the current President (played by Michael Douglas) calls out his opponent–an eerily pre-MAGA character named Bob Rumson–by saying

We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle age, middle class, middle income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family, and American values and character…

That scene is a vivid example of the way in which art–in this case, film–can illuminate life. Nearly 30 years later, the scene seems eerily prescient. 

In the movie, it was Bob Rumson. Today, it’s Elon Musk.

After Musk purchased Twitter– now renamed X– expressions of bigotry and anti-Semitism on the site increased significantly. Thanks to Musk’s chaotic administration, the number of advertisers and users had already been steadily dwindling, but advertiser departures exploded last week, after Musk endorsed a post blaming “Jewish communities” for pushing “dialectical hatred against whites” and promoting the white supremacist conspiracy theory that “western Jewish populations” are behind the “flooding” of countries with “hordes of minorities.”

Musk tweeted “You have said the actual truth.” 

As a result, a stream of prominent brands halted their advertising. The departures included Disney, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent of CNN. Rather than responding to the exodus by apologizing, or by vowing to improve content mediation, Musk doubled down, blaming the Anti-Defamation League–and the Jews–for the platform’s problems and its greatly diminished value.

In true Trump fashion, Musk has sued Media Matters for reporting that company ads often appeared next to anti-Semitic content, asserting that the organization had somehow falsified the data. And Musk is threatening to sue the Anti-Defamation League, for daring to publish research documenting a striking increase in hate on the platform since Musk took it over.

Elon Musk issued a series of statements in which he has blamed secret manipulation by a Jewish organization for the destruction of the X platform, which was once called Twitter. Saying the Anti-Defamation League was the “primary” reason for falling ad revenue at X, Musk first threatened, then later seemed to promise to sue for damages.

That’s right. After months in which Musk has supported racist rants; encouraged hate speech; elevated literal Nazi propaganda; fired every Twitter employee in Brazil on suspicion of being too liberal; fired the entire company press office and the entire company communications department; decimated the team responsible for content moderation; terrified advertisers with chaos, irresponsibility, and perpetuating racism; and thrown away global brand recognition by renaming the whole platform to indulge a personal whim, Musk has put his finger on the real issue.

It’s the Jews.

Shades of Bob Rumson…

Permit me to suggest that the “real issue” with Twitter/X is a man-child with way too much money and an ego that won’t permit him to admit his own inadequacies and mistakes. 

Mmm…sounds familiar.

When you think about it, that clip from An American President applies far more widely than to Musk. It perfectly describes not just Trump, but most contemporary Republican candidates and officeholders. Today’s GOP policy-free “platform” can be entirely summed up by those same two strategies: playing on voters’ fears, and telling those voters who they should blame for whatever troubles them–immigrants, Jews, Blacks. It’s what MAGA is all about.

In Indiana, it’s the modus operandi of posturing incompetents like Todd Rokita, Mike Braun and Jim Banks. 

I guess next year we’ll see if that’s really the way to win elections…..it sure doesn’t seem to be the way to manage a successful social media platform…

Comments

Rokita Again…

A week or so ago, a reader sent me a private message about a “thin blue line” flag he’d seen displayed in a window of the Indiana Statehouse. It concerned him, because he was aware that the flag was associated with the White Supremacy movement.

I was totally unaware of the flag’s message or existence, so I consulted Google.

According to Wikipedia, “The thin blue line US flag has appeared regularly at Trump rallies. The flag, which ostensibly stands for solidarity with the police, appeared as well at the January 6 United States Capitol attack, during which police officers were beaten and attacked by the mob of Trump supporters and far right extremists.”

Police departments in Madison, Wisconsin and Los Angeles, California have banned police display of the flag because of its associations with views described as “undemocratic, racist, and bigoted.”

According to the Los Angeles Times,

For some, the “thin blue line” flag is an expression of solidarity with police officers who have lost their lives on the job.

To others, the black-and-white American flag with a single blue stripe is a potent symbol of the ties between right-wing extremism and American law enforcement.

The tension between those irreconcilable interpretations spilled over in the Los Angeles Police Department this month, when Chief Michel Moore ordered the flag, which was widely displayed in station lobbies around the city, to be removed from public view….

In a department-wide email, Moore said the flag’s original meaning of support for police had been overshadowed when it began appearing at rallies for the Proud Boys and other far-right extremist groups.

“It’s unfortunate that extremist groups have hijacked the use of the ‘Thin Blue Line Flag’ to symbolize their undemocratic, racist, and bigoted views. Flags serve as powerful symbols with specific meanings,” he wrote, adding that officers would still be allowed to display the flag in their personal work spaces, lockers and personal vehicles

My correspondent’s knowledge of the contested meaning of the flag led him to do some further digging; after attending a downtown meeting, he visited the Statehouse in an effort to determine just whose office was responsible for the display. He learned that–as you have probably guessed from the title of this post– the office was that of Indiana’s Attorney General, Todd Rokita.

That would be the same Todd Rokita who has consistently pandered to the GOP’s extreme Right, the Todd Rokita who has enthusiastically repeated his endorsement of indicted former President Trump, and thrown the weight of his office behind anti-abortion extremists– the same Todd Rokita who has now been charged by an Indiana judicial watchdog with violating professional conduct rules while conducting his unhinged vendetta against the Indiana University doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio.

The complaint against Rokita was filed by the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission–not by a partisan political body. (Rokita is currently paying the  outside lawyers defending him against those charges with our tax dollars.)

Is it possible that Rokita was unaware that the “blue lives matter” flag had been hijacked by White Supremacists? Sure. (Rokita isn’t known for doing meticulous research.) But even giving him the benefit of that doubt, display of the flag is problematic. It originated in response to the multiple demonstrations organized by Black Lives Matter following the murder of George Floyd, and even at the beginning was widely seen as a criticism of Black activism and support for “active” policing tactics.

Purposeful display of that flag thus sends a message to Black Hoosiers about the loyalties of their state’s Attorney General, who is supposed to serve the interests of all of the citizens of Indiana without favoritism or bias.

The office is supposed to represent the state in cases involving the state’s interest, provide legal defense to state officials or agencies in court, and provide formal advisory opinions on constitutional or legal questions to state officials. 

Rokita has used it to wage culture war.

He regularly joins with other Republican AGs in national, highly partisan cases that do not involve Indiana, and he is currently fighting to keep an ethics opinion involving his own “side” employment secret. His persistent, unwarranted attacks against the doctor who aborted a ten-year-old who’d been viciously raped–a doctor who’d followed all applicable laws–is beyond disgusting.

Given what we know of Rokita and his ambitions, I’d be willing to bet that he knew about the White Nationalist associations of that flag, but even if he didn’t, its display is a highly inappropriate signal of where his partialities lie.

I don’t know who the Democrats will run against him, but that person already has my vote–and deserves yours. Rokita needs to go.

Comments

Ex Post Facto Rokita

The Indiana Citizen is among a variety of sources trying to fill the void left by Indianapolis’ “ghost newspaper,” the Indianapolis Star. Unlike several other such efforts, the Citizen doesn’t purport to be a digital newspaper-it’s a nonpartisan, non-profit platform “dedicated to increasing the number of informed, engaged Hoosier citizens.” Its creator, Bill Moreau, was focused on increasing informed voter turnout.

Of course, any effort to educate/motivate Hoosier voters requires coverage of the public servants (talk about a quaint phrase!) who are likely to be asking for those votes, and the Citizen is accordingly a valuable and non-biased source of such information. (If you live in Indiana and don’t already visit the site, you should.)

All this is by way of highlighting a recent report by the Citizen on our sleazy Attorney General, Todd Rokita, about whom I have previously posted numerous times. (If you type “Rokita” in the search bar, a number of posts will emerge–too many to link to.)

The Indianapolis woman trying to see the ethics opinion about Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s previous moonlighting gig claims a last-minute legislative maneuver “engineered by Rokita and his confederates” intrudes on judicial authority in violation of the Indiana Constitution.

Barbara Tully made her arguments in a response to the attorney general’s attempt to keep private an informal advisory opinion from the Indiana Inspector General. Rokita requested the opinion shortly after he became attorney general, apparently to see if he could ethically perform his duties for the state while continuing to hold his job in the private sector with Apex Benefits.

His office claimed the inspector general found no ethical conflicts but refused to release the advisory opinion. After the Marion County Superior Court ordered in January that a copy of the opinion be given to Tully, Rokita was able to amend the inspector general statute making such opinions confidential, including those issued before the amended statute took effect.

He has since turned to the Court of Appeals of Indiana, filing Theodore Edward Rokita v. Barbara Tully, 323A-PL-705, and argued, in part, that Tully’s lawsuit is now moot under the new law. Tully counters Rokita is usurping the separation of powers clause in Article 3, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution.

“This type of gamesmanship by a member of the executive branch to involve the legislative branch in judicial branch affairs violates the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers,” Tully asserts in her brief filed Wednesday. “This Court should decide this appeal based on the facts and law as they existed when the trial court entered its final judgment in favor of Tully.”

There is no suggestion that Tully is raising the issue of “ex post facto” laws; the posture of the case probably precludes that argument. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help thinking that Rokita’s efforts to hide that ethics document are inappropriate for much the same reason that the Founders made “ex post facto” laws unconstitutional.

If I can simply disadvantage a litigation opponent by using the power of my office to change the rules mid-stream, I make a mockery of the rule of law. As Tully argues in her brief,

This type of manipulation of the legislative process at the very least should diminish the normal presumption of constitutionality,” Tully asserts. “The apparent purpose of this amendment was to invalidate Tully’s judgment under (the Access to Public Records Act) without bothering to comply with normal legislative formalities and should warrant heightened judicial scrutiny ….

The article in the Citizen explains several of the legal arguments raised in the suit, but for non-lawyers, Rokita’s frenzied effort to keep the ethics opinion secret raises a more obvious question: what’s he so desperate to hide?

Back in 2021, I posted about the discovery that Rokita was still employed by the health benefits firm he’d worked for prior to assuming office, notwithstanding the fact that  being an AG is a 24-hour-a-day job–and the fact that as AG, he had investigative jurisdiction over his “other” employer…

Aside from that obvious conflict of interest, there was another small problem: Rokita’s dual employment violated even Indiana’s weak ethics law. (You’d think a lawyer–especially the state’s lawyer–might have noticed that.)

Indiana’s Ghost Employment Rule —found at 42 IAC 1-5-13–is summarized by the office of the Inspector General as follows: “Don’t work on anything outside your official job duties.”

So what could have been in that Ethics opinion Rokita has consistently and adamantly refused to make public?

Interestingly, after telling reporters that he’d obtained a letter from the then-Inspector General opining that his conduct somehow didn’t violate Indiana’s ethics law, Rokita hired that same Inspector General into a senior (and presumably well-compensated) position with the Attorney General’s office.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

Or read the Indiana Citizen.

Comments