But am I just doing Kristi Noem’s dirty work by continuing to post and share the police interrogation videos she leaked to bury Jason Ravnsborg? South Dakota Standard writer Ross Dolan thinks so. He says Noem’s selective transparency only serves her political purposes and may deny the family of Joe Boever the opportunity to hold Ravnsborg accountable for killing Boever on Highway 14 last September:
Ravnsborg, now facing impeachment after the filing of charges in the Boever case, has become a statewide pariah. With public sentiment rising against the attorney general, Noem chose to inflame that sentiment and ride the righteous wave. She decided to pile on, and to hell with the law.
Noem had every right to request the AG’s resignation, he had become an embarrassment, but she couldn’t leave it at that. Instead, she chose to abuse her power.
Her interference will not serve the Boever family well.
The only thing transparent in this case is how the governor has ignored the law and used the tragic death of a citizen to serve her own ambitious agenda [Ross Dolan, “SD Gov. Kristi Noem’s Ambitions Are Clearly Evident in Her Interference in the Jason Ravnsborg Investigation,” South Dakota Standard, 2021.03.02].
Far be it from me to be lured into a trap by Kristi. But Ravnsborg would likely not face a jury trail for his misdemeanor charges: those affairs should be a quick appearance before the judge and a slap on the wrist. Impeachment won’t be stopped, and impeachment may be the most important bit of public justice to do right now, removing a man who lacks character and public confidence and thus cannot carry out his duties. And a lawsuit likely won’t be stopped and will be fought much more in negotiations with Ravnsborg’s insurer than in front of a jury.
We do well to be suspicious of Noem’s motives at every turn—and reporters will do well to ask why she doesn’t apply the same standard of transparency to investigations of her own misconduct in office. But Ravnsborg, as a public official in law enforcement, warrants heightened scrutiny. The police videos released serve the public interest by establishing that he is unfit to continue in his elected role.
This puts Noem in an untenable position. If she doesn’t release the video/investigation materials, she is immediately accused of covering up for Ravnsborg and South Dakota is once again protecting people in power. If she does, well, we see what happens here. I am with Cory: the head law enforcement officer of the state deserves heightened scrutiny. The release also provides context for his impeachment. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Noem, but this doesn’t seem like one of them to me.
People at the top should be morally and ethically above scrutiny, but, this is South Dakota Red we are dealing with. Expect the worst and be prepared for the worst ever.
She wasn’t in an untenable situation. She could have used this moment to educate the public that she had to follow the law, cited it, 1-27-1.5 (5) – Certain records not open to inspection and copying, and further explained this law has never been broken. Regardless of how we feel about Ravnsborg due process is critically more important than any form of frontier justice. Dolan is 100% right but all the liberal bloggers have failed in their duty to expose Noem’s behavior and call it exactly what it is: CRIMINAL. She did far more than make it difficult to prosecute Ravnsborg, she pressed the impeachment that probably wouldn’t have gone ahead without the legislators seeing this highly prejudicial information, and then blackmailed him by saying she would continue releasing more (fill in the blank until he resigned). She’s a dangerous, savagely ambitious politician. Am I too trusting? Cory’s failure to call this out has made me wonder if she’s promised him some retirement money if he would back off so she can get elected president. Maybe that’s rank, but she broke the law and committed blackmail.
Yep – South Dakota Red – any degree of ethical behavior above ZERO is t be expected. Now, a judge may see Noem’s behavior as prejudicial, and a cause for problems in a jury trial (criminal or civil), but that judge SHOULD also take the broader context of public perceptions into account. That general public perception is already biased to expect unethical behavior from elected Republicans – across the board. Would a judge be so honest about his/her political (and yes it is a matter of politics in its purest definition) awareness of that context as to take it into consideration? A GOOD, SMART one would. I’ll just leave it at that.
Dolan and happy camper are wrong. There is no right to jury trial for class two misdemeanors if the state waives jail time. The public’s right to know outweighs ranvsborg’s interest.
Hap, I promise you, Governor Noem has not spoken to me since that Tea Party forum in Rapid City several years back. State government under the SDGOP will be offering me zero deals.
Gov Noem committed no crime. the heightened public interest in this case qualifies the release of information as legal, as established by the Mercer v. Jackley precedent in the Benda case.
Regarding John’s comment about a jury trial for the misdemeanor charges. I hope jail time is not off the table. A $1500 fine is not going to be much of a deterrent for Jason Ravnsborg, but I think 90 days in jail might make an impression. By his own admission and evidence taken from his cell phones, Ravnsborg continued to use his phone while driving to Pierre even after running over Joe Boever. I doubt if it was hands-free since he was in a borrowed car. Couldn’t he have been charged with more than 1 count of using an electronic device?
Tom, Ravnsbutt claims the car was his personal driving machine. Did something change, besides his recollection of events?
My give a damn about Ravnsbutt’s due process broke when he carelessly denied Joe Boever his due process rights.
Kids in red South Dakota will wonder why parents and others come down so hard on them about the dangers of distracted driving, when it looks pretty likely the worthless Ag will skate punishment for his careless actions.
Phooey!
HC said, “She’s a dangerous, savagely ambitious politician.” Holy god! Its Hillary Clinton with looks and speaking ability!
HRC graduated from some eastern law school called Yale and does not speak magat-speak, which is the pablum fed to drumpfian nutjobs from trailer parks. HRC is the most maligned woman in the world because magats can’t/won’t tell the truth about her. They all lie.
Trump in heels, a mouthpiece with an endless loop of republicant talking points.
Didn’t rovndsburg say kristi announced him dead at her first press conference on this so that’s the reason why he asked those investigators if the stuff was going to get sent to her or the county? I mean, he kind of takes a swipe at her in the tape. I don’t know if he meant that she’s incompetent or if he was skeert of her for some reason else. I kind of am guessing here this is going to one of the great scandals of Noem’s administration of the category that no one can place her in the state when it happened. I guess I forgot why the republicans who vote went with Jason instead of marty jackley.
Jackley was term limited and running against no nada.
Mike from Iowa, he was driving his personal car when he ran over Boever, but when he continued on to Pierre he was driving the car he borrowed from the sheriff. He admitted in the interview video that he sent his chief of staff a photo of his car after the incident and also called the sheriff and his chief of staff to make arrangements to return the sheriff’s car the next day. I would doubt he synced up his phone with the sheriff’s car, if it was equipped with bluetooth.
I beg to differ Cory. It’s one thing to release information because it’s in the public interest (a very broad statement), but Bender was not awaiting trial at the time. He was deceased. Nothing, however, can be released that would preclude a man from getting a fair trial. Do I know case law on that? No, but think about that for a moment. The government cannot usurp your right to a fair trial because of a minor legal case in South Dakota, and Noem used this as a weapon of coercion. You are totally on the wrong side of this argument. And why? Cause you all wanted to see the results, or it was a conspiracy!!! She flipped that right around on you, cause now you can’t say anything, worse you’re stuck making arguments on her behalf that she did have the right to do this, which besides obviously being against Ravnborg’s rights has opened the door for her to do this in the future, again and again with you arguing she has this right, even though the judge has just ruled against it. I am not arguing for Ravnsborg but for all of us to get the fairest trials possible.
I’m thinking about Dicta’s comment at the top about the untenable position… if I may split Dicta’s hairs, the position isn’t necessarily untenable: one can hold the position; it’ll just be uncomfortable and incur criticism from one side or another no matter what position she chooses.
So let me think through it independent of Kristi and my feelings about her. What would I have done if I were Governor?
First of all, the moment I get the news, as leader of the party, I call my A.G. and tell him we need to talk. I have him come over to the mansion on Sunday, the day after the crash. I have three other people in the room: my Lt. Gov., my chief of staff, and Marty Jackley. I tell Jason, “This is your one chance to tell me what happened, whole truth, nothing but the truth. You killed a man, and I need to know if there’s any way this ends with anything other than your immediate resignation. Start talking… and remember: if it sounds like BS to us, it’ll sound like BS to the judge and to the public. I will not stand behind any BS, not on this matter.”
Odds are, we never get to the part of the hypothetical where Jason gets all the way to March and we’re still fussing over interrogation videos and impeachment. He sounds so full of crap in our Sunday interview that I say it doesn’t matter how the story comes out; our party isn’t going to invest any resources in defending his indefensible behavior. I ask Jason if there’s any good reason he shouldn’t resign immediately, he fails to give it, and I go public the next day saying I’ve asked the Attorney General to take a leave of absence without pay while the investigation is ongoing. I tell Jason that’s cover to give him a week to get his head straight, do the right thing, and fully resign.
But maybe Jason tells me the story he tells the ND police on September 14, and I think, o.k., there’s wiggle room here and let the process play out. Suppose I grant him that grace… though I tell him he’s on really thin ice. The moment I get wind of what the investigators reveal in the September 30 interview, that Jason was reading that god-damned liberal rag Dakota Free Press on his work phone when he crashed into a man with a flashlight in plain sight on the shoulder of the highway, I go ape. I summon Jason to my office, I do not shut the door, and I tell him in a voice everyone can hear all the way down past the Supreme Court that he resigns by the end of business tomorrow or I drop whatever ton of bricks I legally can on him. I get on the horn to my state and county party leaders and tell them they need to call Jason and tell him to resign. I call Jason’s chief of staff, Tim Bormann, and I tell him he’d better get his boss to think straight and quit, for the sake of the party.
if that doesn’t get Jason out the door (and remember, we’re still back in October), I publicly declare that I have lost confidence in the Attorney General’s ability to do his job. I tell the public he lied directly to me about the accident, and I can’t trust a liar. I appoint Lance Russell and John Fitzgerald, the guys we let Ravnsborg beat at the 2018 convention, as special prosecutors to take over whatever cases the Attorney General might be handling for the state. To make my point, I pick a nice, low-impact case that Ravnsborg is handling, like that foolish appeal Ravnsborg is still pursuing in federal court over that liberal scourge Heidelberger’s win on HB 1094 and I have my special counsels file a brief asking for delay or reassignment of attorneys for the state due to my lack of confidence in the Attorney General’s ability to defend the state to the fullest.
And instead of traipsing around the country campaigning for Donald Trump, I build my own Presidential stock by staying in South Dakota all October talking to the local press every day about how absolutely disgusted I am with that liar Ravnsborg for killing a man, lying to me about it, and pretending he can still serve as our Attorney General.
After all that pressure, I can’t believe I’d ever need to release the police video. He’d be out before charges are filed.
But if my chief of staff talked me down (as my chief of staff is paid handsomely to do, and must do frequently, because I am who I am) in September and October and convinced me to keep my hands clean and let the process play out, and if I didn’t get the evidence until the charges came out, I’d call Jason in again and say, “You’ve lost my confidence; are you going to resign?” If he said no, my next call is to the House and Senate leaders, both parties. I invite them in, I play the videos (I also serve snacks and pop, because three hours is a long time to sit through Jason Ravnsborg whining), and I ask, in a tone that makes clear the answer I think is right, if they are willing to impeach.
And then maybe… maybe I hold back on the video. I tell the House leaders they will should issue a subpoena to formally obtain the video to play as evidence in their impeachment hearings. Maybe I count on the weight of the process to be enough to force Jason out.
But I likely reread the Mercer/Jackley decision, see the release of the video is legal and justified by Ravnsborg’s status as a public official, see the release of the video does little harm and a world of good in making clear that Ravnsborg needs to go, see that my party gains nothing by keeping Ravnsborg, and I prepare to release the tape. I check with the Boevers and the Nemecs to see if they have any worry that my releasing that video will harm their chances to sue Ravnsborg and get a big settlement. And when they say they aren’t worried (and that’s what appears to have happened in this world: Noem said she had the family’s permission), I drop the video bomb.
But you know what? Just to maximize the impact and minimize my exposure, I tell my chief of staff to talk to an intermediary who can leak an untraceable copy of the video to that SOB Heidelberger to post on that damned Dakota Free Press. Ravnsborg was reading that rag when he killed a man; let that rag finally kill Ravnsborg’s career.
Hap, read the Mercer/Jackley case. The Attorney General himself acknowledged that the public interest in the criminal activities of a public figure override South Dakota’s confidentiality statutes.
All she needed to do is keep her big mouth shut and let the legislature subpoena all the documentation it needed from the investigation to conduct their impeachment business without a public audience. Transcripts of the interviews are appropriate, less publicly inflammatory, and accomplish the same purpose.
Cory, I was totally engrossed in the beautifully dystopian world “if I were governor”. Love it! The logic is impeccable but obviously logic does not exist in Noem’s South Dakota. I patiently await the civil settlement and hope to God Ravnsborg had a million dollar liability policy.