South Dakota state government can take swift action against corruption when it wants to. Less than one month after catching the former state employee who stole a historic state flag from the Secretary of State’s office, Attorney General Marty Jackley announces that Garrett Darwin DeVries, age 26, of Washington, D.C., has pled guilty to Class 1 misdemeanor theft. For his trouble, DeVries gets a 30-day sentence suspended on one year of good behavior and pays court costs. Instead of a fine, DeVries has to pay $1,500 toward the “future preservation and protection” of the “Original State Flag.”
The Attorney General puts “Original State Flag” in quote marks. I can’t tell if he’s suffering from a bad case of unnecessary-quotitis or if he is acknowledging the doubts Gant-era SOS flunky Pat Powers has raised about the provenance of the flag. Those doubts have not yet been publicly addressed (maybe Garrett’s $1,500 will pay for Secretary Krebs to take the “Original State Flag” to the next taping of Antiques Roadshow).
However old the “Original State Flag” may be, the Attorney General and DCI took this several-hundred-dollar piece of cloth very seriously. I get the sense they recognized that citizens would take a theft like this seriously as well. This isn’t just abstract money shuffled about from foreign investors to corporate shells to offshore accounts that no one ever saw. This was an “Original State Flag,” by gum! and we can’t have a scandal like that dragging on into the next election cycle.
If GOP stalker-PAC America Rising lets DeVries come back to work, expect the SDGOP to ask them to keep the flag-filcher as far away from South Dakota as possible.
At the end of the day he will have a clean record-as if none of this happened so it can’t be tied to wingnuts. Pretty small,shallow victory,but I guess you take them when and where you can.
Veni, vidi, furati, reddo
Like did you think this guy was going to get any time.
Yeah,moses,I kinda did. Was hoping for the death penalty,but would have settled for chopping off the thief’s hands. Either sentence would have prwecluded him from ever stealing again.
I came, I saw, I stole, … what’s that last part, 96?
Verb[edit]
reddō (present infinitive reddere, perfect active reddidī, supine redditum); third conjugation
I give back, return, restore.
I give up, hand over, deliver, render, provide, assign
I surrender, resign.
I give or pay back; take revenge for, punish, inflict vengeance for.
I repeat, declare, report, narrate, recite, rehearse.
I represent, imitate, express, resemble.
I return in profit.
Take tour pick.
They could have kept it all quiet and let this GOP insider simply return the flag and nobody would have been the wiser, but … they couldn’t trust Shantel to keep it all a state secret. Go to the press release blog and see the anons gnashing their teeth about Shantel spilling the beans on Gant and his minions. She’s just not as much of a team player as they want – at least when it was well known already what an incompetent bunch the Gant/Powers team was.
So, did Jackley find the missing $43,000 and the ipads, or did he look?
Gant’s just lucky this young man didn’t throw him under the train by saying “Mr. Gant said I could take it” or something like that. It is interesting that this fellow was the one behind the ultra-expensive voting thing for soldiers overseas.
I would have claimed that I took it fearing that Gant might have thrown it out at spring cleaning time and that I was just protecting it. Shouldn’t this flag be at the State Historical Society Museum?
“I give back,” Cory. Sorry for being tuned out for a bit. Thanks for filling in, mfi.
Interesting.. AG Jackley slapping the hand of a crony to try and get some street cred back after looking the other way on this Cash In… errr I mean GEAR UP program and running interference on EB5. You’d think the guy was running for governor.
How can the value be less than $400 if it is valuable enough to warrant a $1,500.00 preservation costs? Answer: because it had to be otherwise they would have had to charge a crony with a serious felony and he may have spilled the beans on Rounds-Daugaard Hall machine business..
Marty is such a tough law and order guy!
Millions go missing and unaccounted for with EB-5…no action.
Millions go misappropriated from DOE…no action.
7 dead from corruption. Balances inaction with quick assumptions. Says both cases closed.
Waste, fraud and theft in the SoS office…does great impression of a blind umpire.
Sex trafficking hits crisis level under his watch…sticks finger in dike.
Wastes state money on ideological SCOTUS suits to bend over for the GOP base…goes 0 for how many?
State treasure and artifact stolen…orders offender to write a note. (Probably wrote the non-appololgy note for him that will probably read something to the effect of I’m sorry if my actions offended anyone…)
I will give Marty credit for being a strict party loyalist and political hack. He’s good at it!
Good job Marty and lucky for you that SD doesn’t vote on substance but blind party loyalty.
Just one question Marty…why do you have a picture of your family on your official website and press releases? Seriously…none of them are holding guns, a flag or a cross…hoping you will correct this in future photos.
Good dang question, Roger! No sign of those iPads yet. And good roster of crimes still unsolved, Jana. We’ve got the flag, Marty, now where’s the beef?
Rohr, I didn’t see those DWC anons, except for the one saying Krebs has a big ego. Aren’t Republicans in general more likely to embrace Krebs as the sole example they can cite of Republicans being able to police their own corruption? And if not, is there any chance Krebs could be one of those Republicans of convenience and that we could lure her over to the SDDP?
I wonder if Garrett even had to make a personal appearance in SD?
According to the capjournal,he was represented in court by an attorney named Bradley Schrieber I believe.DeVries did not appear. According to the Argus Leader,Smarty says he already apologized to co-workers and the state of South Dakota. Jackley is making it sound like the flag is real important for having a value of less than $400.
OMG,the flag was hand painted. No wonder it had so little value until it became a political football.
Red herring.
Justice was served by our Attorney General.
Now move along. Nothing else to see here.