The House Select Committee investigating killer Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg for impeachment plans to meet again Monday after House and Senate floor debates. But in his apparently infinite capacity for distraction from the main point that Jason Ravnsborg broke the law, killed a man, lied about it, and isn’t fit to hold elected office, impeachment committee chair and Speaker of the House Spencer Gosch (R-23/Glenham) is complaining that people are calling him and other committee members to say Ravnsborg should go:
…Gosch… said a telemarketing company this week has been calling state residents and transferring the calls to members of the committee.
“This telemarketing firm is using a nonfactual, distasteful, and inappropriate script to insight [sic] public outrage,” Gosch said in a statement. “It is clear to me that whoever is behind this movement is trying to impede, influence, or taint the ongoing investigation of this committee. We are looking into who is behind this” [Stephen Groves, “S.D. Speaker: Telemarketers Trying to Sway AG Impeachment,” AP via Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2022.01.27].
Using nonfactual, distasteful, and inappropriate text to incite public outrage is the Republican playbook, so, Spencer, mote/plank. People calling you to tell you to get rid of a lawbreaking, manslaughtering Attorney General are not impeding, tainting, or inappropriately influencing your investigation any more than Nick Nemec, Jenny Boever, and other relatives of Joe Boever, the man Ravnsborg killed, are doing anything wrong by attending your committee’s hearings and reminding you of the human toll of Ravnsborg’s crimes.
Now it may be very interesting to find out who’s willing to pay Ohio telemarketer Grand Solutions, Inc. to coordinate citizen calls to South Dakota legislators to take what ought to be a pretty easy action to preserve justice and the integrity of South Dakota government. Governor Kristi Noem, who has a whole lot of money to spend on marketing and no love for her ticket’s second-biggest liability (first is her own corruption and incompetence, but let’s not get distracted) says she knows nothing about these Ohio robocalls other than what Gosch has told her. Hmmm… I wonder what Marty Jackley has been up to….
Update: The calls may not have been inappropriate, but Rep. Jamie Smith (D-15/Sioux Falls) tells Lee Strubinger they weren’t very effective. he apparently got one of the calls from the call center that offered to connect him to his representative on the committee. He asked the telemarketer for his name, but the telemarketer wouldn’t give that information. The telemarketer claimed he was in Pierre, but Smith said he could hear the call center noise in the background, and he’s not aware of any big call centers in Pierre. Thus, the telemarketers pushing this call, like most telemarketers, are just sneaky liars.
Plus, cold calling people and then cold reconnecting them to their legislators without much chance to prepare their comments or think about the issue doesn’t strike me as the best political tactic For engaging in real persuasion of elected officials.
I actually agree with Speaker Gosch in this case. This telemarketing campaign is not the right way to go about it. It is trying to taint an ongoing investigation by a Legislature Committee. So, I respectfully disagree with you on this one, Cory.
I can assure Speaker Gosch that no member of Joe Boever’s family has hired any firm to robocall legistators on the impeachment issue. That would be someone with more money to burn than we have. I can also assure him that I will be attending legislative meetings anytime the issue of Ravnsborg’s impeachment comes up.
Every piece of information in the investigation files has been available to Speaker Gosch since at least last year’s regular legislative session and that the House Select Committee on Investigations could have been authorized and formed at that time rather than in a special session not held until the second week in November, ten months after the 2021 legislative session convened. The Special Committee could have preformed preliminary work, appointed special staff and reviewed the reports in the months between the 2021 Legislative Session and Ravnsborg’s sentencing, held open hearings in the months after the sentencing and if warrented forwarded articles of impeachment to the full House for consideration in time for the special sessions. This could have all been concluded in 2021.
At some point I hope he makes the investigation files available to the general public, I would like to read them. I trust the news media to make these files available online once released, sadly I don’t expect the SD Legislature to do the same. Another beef of mine is that the SD Legislature is very tardy in posting meetings of the House Select Committee on Investigations, often we hear scuttlebutt of meetings but they aren’t posted until the last hours before the meeting. It makes it hard to plan the rest of your life when everything you have scheduled is subject to last minute cancelation.
Due dilligence and deliberate action don’t require dragging things out for over a year.
This telemarketing campaign reminds me of people who try to taint the jury pool in a court case, trying to influence and intimidate the jury.
Yeah, the fake outrage is a bit much, but typical of the skewed morality too often exhibited on third floor. I don’t like telemarketers. I don’t like killers who use their positions of power to escape justice. The latter seems to me to be the vastly larger issue here. You wonder where the outrage is regarding Ravnesborg’s behavior. It’s taken a looooooong time for the lazy legislators to get to this point in the Ravnesborg impeachment. You wonder why Gosch would threaten to “investigate” this telemarketing effort. He can’t even stick to the far bigger issue here. The telemarketing scheme is a free speech issue, even if it is a horrible idea. Gosch needs to focus on the real issue.
Anyone thinking Ravnesborg set this up as a false flag operation? He’s got to know this would piss off the legislators and take them off their focus.
It works both ways. I certainly do not like the robo calls from any politicians with their canned messages bragging of all their accomplishments when they do nothing but receive a paycheck.
Jason. We’re on it.
Newland makes a good point: Ravnsborg does present with symptoms of an addiction to Adderall.
https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-63163/adderall-oral/details
In Ravnborg’s defense when said he didn’t see flashlight light, well, isn’t justice supposed to be blind?
(No offense meant to any interested parties i.e. Joe Boever’s relatives.)
I thought robo calls in general to cell phones were illegal on the federal level???
is the comparison to trying to influence a jury flawed? We’re not talking about a criminal trial here we’re talking about a public legislative investigation of a public official. The committee hearing will result in a decision by elected officials to either hold an elected official accountable or to deem that no further discussion is necessary. Whatever they do, our legislators are about to cast a public vote on a matter of great public concern. Are citizens not allowed to contact legislators and try to influence that decision? Obviously, Robocalls from poorly prepared agitators reading from scripts may not be an effective way to influence that decision, but what our dividing line here? To what extent are we citizens allowed to publicly comment upon impeachment, and to what extent are we allowed to tell our legislators how we feel about Jason and impeachment?
This has Ian and Gnoem’s fingerprints all over it.
Yeah, Cory, it’s not a jury. It’s a legislative body, supposedly doing the work of a legislative body, no matter how badly the SD Legislature does any sort of legislative work. My own view from past efforts is the Legislature can’t do the job of cleaning up any sort of corruption, and this is corruption of the highest order. A man with vast governmental power killed a man, and justice was not done. It would be far better in cases like this to have the recall available to citizens. It would also be nice to have a justice system that worked. Then Legislature wouldn’t have to dilly dally. I see no way these clowns get around to doing their job and kicking Ravnesborg to the curb. Citizen input is fne, but it should be thoughtful and respectful. I think robocall-generated input is the wrong way to go about citizen input. A letter or email in your own words is a better way to sway legislators.
You know, Donald, you might be onto something. This telemarketing push seems so poorly conceived and poorly executed that it could well have been some thing thunk up by Jason himself. Kristi and Marty both have much better ways to spend their campaign funds.
It’s a matter of not a lot of time for someone to connect Grand Solutions, Inc., to whomever paid for and scripted the calls. I’m a little confused if these were robo-calls (which are actually dirt cheap and old technology) or live operator calls of minimum wage phone banks reading scripts in Ohio to influence voters in South Dakota. Who in Noem’s or Ravnsborg’s networks have ties with Grand Solutions, which apparently doesn’t have its own website (cheap cheap cheap) or is a third-party call center for another contractor who was paid to generate the calls. This doesn’t have the markings of a Jackley tactic.
Noem is a shrewd back-stabbing mud slapper who has no morals and poor instincts (the hyper-vitriolic letters signed by family after the Sherry Bren fiasco were clearly drafted by Noem’s inner circle). As others point out, Ravnsborg is looking for distractions to keep the heat on anyone but himself. Is he capable of dumb choices and reckless reactions? Duh. Or was it committee members and other GOP caucus members who seem to have a loathing for their governor’s presidential ego trip?
As to the Democrats, they seem capable so far to sit back and let the titans clash.
Are robocalls legal? If you answer the phone and hear a recorded message instead of a live person, it’s a robocall. A robocall trying to sell you somethingis illegal unless the company trying to sell you something got written permission, directly from you, to call you that way.
Robocalls | FTC Consumer Informationhttps://www.consumer.ftc.gov › articles › robocall
I agree with 96 tears. I suspect the vindictive Governor Noem is paying for the Robo Calls. She does not want Ravensborg on the ballot and that unlikely circumstance is not out of the question at this time. She has the money and the connections to contract these Robo Calls secretly. Don’t underestimate her use of perdition and mendacity.
Arlo & 96 Tears , I don’t know who is behind this robocall campaign. I don’t know if it’s a political vendetta….whatever….they’ve muddied the waters of justice with this immoral meddling and they’re just helping themselves, whomever it is. I hope the Legislature launches an investigation to find out who is behind the robocalls of intimidation.
Someone paid someone to get lots of people to call the Legislature and urge them to impeach a killer and lawbreaker masquerading a responsible Attorney General. That effort constituted no crime that I know of. Legislators and their constituents need to keep their focus on impeaching Jason Ravnsborg.
Agreed, Cory. That magot will be creeping around Texas on a PR junket to campaign for re-election and pretend he’s doing something about sex trafficking. What’s the magot doing about Native girls being kidnapped and trafficked right here in South Dakota? The same as his governor. All talk, no action and no money.
https://www.keloland.com/news/local-news/ravnsborg-in-texas-for-tour-of-border/
I remember a time that when a public official committed crimes that killed someone, the prosecutors and judges would throw the book at them. To set an example. When you’re a public official, you are made to be the example to show the justice system means business.
Not here in South Dakota. If you’ve got the votes in Pierre, you’re exonerated and your victim is made into the villain. Ravnsborg needs to be impeached and then tried for manslaughter. Any state’s attorney can file the charges and since they were avoided in Hand County by an incompetent prosecutor, it isn’t double jeopardy. It’s deserved and he belongs in jail to make an example of public officials who flaunt ethics, lie and circumvent the law and kill innocent people.
“mike from iowa” asks:
In Jason’s defense, both Sheriff Volek and the driver who turned around and offered Joe a ride indicated that they saw the light, but it was small enough and dim enough that neither of them even recognized it as a flashlight. Plus there’s no public evidence that any of the countless drivers who passed the flashlight overnight noticed it at all.
The investigators’ insistence that Jason must have seen the light because it was “like a beacon” appears to be directly contradicted by the available evidence.
It seems to me that Jason probably didn’t see Joe’s suicide dive onto his hood because he was looking down at the speedometer as he transitioned out of the reduced-speed zone. Joe’s impact with the right side of the car probably angled it onto the shoulder, and Joe’s body probably tumbled forward off the hood and was struck a second time after Jason reflexively swerved back to the left to keep the car on the pavement.
I’m still wondering what forensic evidence Craig Price would say proves Joe was “walking” during the collision on the shoulder rather than tumbling off the front of the hood.
And I agree with Nick Nemec that this has all taken far too long. It seems cruel.
Shut […] up Kurt!
Ravnsborg and Noem are peas in a pod, traipsing around the country to pose for their national base when they should be doing their jobs here. They should both resign and move to Texas or Washington DC or wherever it is they find their donors and swooning audiences.
And let’s not hijack this thread into another rehash of Kurt’s bogus defenses of our incompetent killer AG. We have another thread where that conversation is being sustained quite nicely. This thread is about the phone calls and whethe rit is legitimate for citizens to tell their legislators what they think of impeaching Ravnsborg.
https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/app/2022/01/29/voice-recording-raises-questions-over-origin-ravnsborg-telemarketing-campaign/
This adds some interesting dimension to the story.
I wouldn’t put it past Noem to have her fingerprint on this somewhere. She said she didn’t know until someone told her….deja vu…that’s what she said about the Amendment A lawsuit. And she really would benefit from Ravnsberg being impeached…she would pick his replacement and she would have another puppet on a string for awhile. After hearing the robo-caller employee caught saying “the governor called…” and their explanation that it was just a tactic to get the employees to work harder…I call bullsh*t…that’s an odd thing to say to spur someone to work harder. Personally I think this has the governor and her yappy lap dog Ian Fury written all over but.
Mr Evans, using probables in your screed are not reasonable, articulable facts. The sheriff admits he saw the light. His job was to investigate that light and he failed miserably.
Maybe you did a suicide dive at birth and damaged your grey matter.
On the other hand, the most hilarious quote of the week:
“We need to know if anyone was using their official position to do anything, to change or to corrupt the matter, or to influence this in a negative way, because corruption is clearly against the law,” Gosch said.
In South Dakota? Since when?
Eve – It only matters who is being viewed as corrupt as to whether or not an accused person “is clearly against the law,” in Mr. Gosch’s mind. If he’s looking for corruption, he needs to take the elevator to the 2nd floor and walk into the Governor’s office to hand out subpoenas. It is hilarious.
Another thing. It’s part of the Ravnsborg strategy to win re-election by making claims that an impeachment hearing is anything like a courtroom trial. Gauging by Mr. Ravnsborg’s woeful inexperience as a practicing courtroom attorney, I understand why he would want people to believe justice and fairness are at play in a legislative hearing. He and his supporters in the House caucus are playing the public for suckers. This is a political process. If you’ve the votes, you win, and it doesn’t matter how you get them.
So, please, dear DFreePressians, stop comparing this proceeding as a trial. It’s politics that will win the day, not evidence or justice. Using a phone bank to shame legislators into doing what’s obvious and right is not illegal. It’s a bit over the top, but not in violation of any laws. It’s considered by the courts as political speech which is protected by the 1st Amendment. A telemarketer wanting to help you with your car’s warranty is in a very different category.
Well..Amy B. is on to something. The calls originate in Ohio. Ian Fury worked for Jim Jordan and has plenty of connections in Ohio. One thing for sure, this tele marketing firm does not work pro bono. Follow the cash.
Cory writes:
This thread is another de facto defense of our thus-far unaccountable DPS secretary. An initial collision violent enough to separate Joe from his lower leg would have separated him from his glasses before his face reached the windshield. It also would have left blood consistent with that amputation where the body rode on the hood. And the body rolling off the side of the car wouldn’t have broken off the passenger side mirror.
It’s been two days since anyone commented there, but if you call my reasoning “bogus” there, I’ll be glad to respond there.
Did you ask Stan Adelstein for his perspective?
“mike from iowa” writes:
A pedestrian overdosed on 78 pills of a psychotropic drug, left town on foot after dark, didn’t ask anyone for a ride, declined a ride offered by a passing motorist, and never told anyone why he was out there. Sheriff Volek had no reason to suspect any of that. The 911 dispatcher who contacted him apparently assumed he was responding to a routine collision with a deer.
Kurt, you seem to ALWAYS be overdosed on psychotropics.
EVANS is as alt fact as he can be, perhaps, deranged. Dude only comes out late in the day. I suspect either when his drugs kick in or when he needs to take something else. Pretty sad what mental health issues can do to you. EVANS needs to seek medical advise on either increasing or decreasing.
Sioux Falls PRAVDA Leader strikes again, this time with a banner story headline on page 1: “Recording signals possible tampering.”
The scribe who wrote the story and headline is helping dumb legislators who are soft on killer/liar Ravnsborg shift focus from his vehicular homicide and lies to cover it up by implying that phone calls lobbying for Jason’s removal from office is like witness or jury tampering in a court trial. It isn’t. If so, they’d be locking up Nick Nemec every night that he sits waiting, waiting and waiting for evidence that Republican legislators give a rat’s ass about his cousin’s horrible death as the result of Jason’s recklessness.
Lobbying your legislator on an issue is not tampering. If he or she thinks so, the fool has no clue about the legislative process. If I’m wrong, they’d better lock up the small army of blue suits who every session day twist arms and offer campaign contributions from their clients to lobby your legislator to vote for giant livestock lots that load up your drinking water with toxins or oil refineries and fossil fuel pipelines or nuclear waste dumps and strip mining the Black Hills. Using phone backs or robo-calls to jack up citizens to phone their legislator as well as TV commercials to call Dusty Johnson to stop beating his dog are commonplace in South Dakota and all other states.
It’s called lobbying, folks. Not “tampering.” The committee will render votes on a report and possibly moving the issue further, based mostly on information they’ve had for a year. They are not an empaneled jury, sequestered to render an impartial verdict. Dumb reporters and soft-headed politicians hoping to lure us down this rabbit hole are why anyone’s talking about “tampering.”
But if soft-headed office holders want to file charges, go ahead. What is the statute involved here? Lobbying public officials? Hiring a phone bank? Involving Ohio citizens in a South Dakota issue?
Having said all of that, the only newsworthy point of the Ohio firm’s intervention in this political decision is who paid for it and why. It was poorly executed, so I’m curious as to which boob wrote the scripts and prepped the phonebank? And, when the boob is found out, what made you think that wouldn’t make you look like an idiot?
Did these robot calls come from Fulton, SD?
Cory had written:
If anyone wants to challenge my reasoning there, I’d be glad to respond there:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2022/01/19/incurious-sheriff-volek-saw-boevers-flashlight-at-ravnsborg-crash-scene-dismissed-it-as-reflection/#comment-406365
Bob Newland writes:
Before I received the Libertarian nomination for state auditor at the 2014 state convention, there was a three-person race for the nomination for attorney general among Bob Newland, Chad Haber, and me. I placed second behind Chad, 16-10, and Bob told me he voted for me.
“jerry” writes:
*advice, not “advise”
I’m not using any legal drugs, and I’ve never used any illegal ones.
My good friend Mr. Evans typed:
grudznick responded:
It is a shame Mr. Evans was too chicken, or mayhap too slow, to make the dash from his front door to the lead shielded van we had parked in his front yard.
*ignore those microphones pointed at your house with the various bipartisan stickers on them*
“grudznick” writes:
Joe Boever overdosed on 78 pills of a psychotropic drug, left town on foot after dark, didn’t ask anyone for a ride, declined a ride offered by a passing motorist, and never told anyone why he was out there. It would be a mind-bending freak coincidence if Jason had been cruising down the shoulder inches from the edge of the pavement, with all four wheels outside the rumble strip, at the very spot where Joe was walking.
It seems to me that Joe probably committed suicide by running into the driving lane and diving onto the hood of a passing car, and it seems to me that Jason probably didn’t see it because it was in the dim periphery of his headlight beam and because he was looking down at the speedometer as he transitioned out of the reduced-speed zone. Joe’s impact with the right side of the car probably angled it onto the shoulder, where his body probably tumbled off the front of the hood and was struck a second time after Jason reflexively swerved back to the left to keep the car on the pavement.
There are several problems with Craig Price’s supposed “reconstruction” of the crash. An initial collision violent enough to separate Joe from his lower leg would have separated him from his glasses before his face reached the windshield. It also would have left blood consistent with that amputation where the body rode on the hood. And the body rolling off the car wouldn’t have broken off the passenger side mirror.
After watching South Dakota journalists report Price’s claims as indisputable facts for well over a year, I’m still wondering what forensic evidence he’d say proves Joe was “walking” during the collision on the shoulder rather than tumbling off the front of the hood.
If anyone wants to discuss this at the link below, I’d be glad to respond there:
https://dakotafreepress.com/2022/01/19/incurious-sheriff-volek-saw-boevers-flashlight-at-ravnsborg-crash-scene-dismissed-it-as-reflection/#comment-406365
Joe’s prescribed dosage of the psychotropic drug found in his crashed truck was up to 3 pills per day. There were 12 pills left after the crashes, and the bottle had been filled with 90 pills the day before.
Maybe Craig Price should have gone all out and accused Jason of overdosing on psychotropic drugs and running Joe down on purpose. That scenario would have been far-fetched, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as far-fetched as the distraction-and-coincidence scenario Price asserts.
Crazy conspiracy driven EVANS, here is your response to the load of bullcrap.
bearcreekbat writes
“As I commented earlier, the reported symptoms of an overdose of this particular drug suggest physical reactions that directly contradicts Mr. Evans’ speculation that Joe had the physical capacity to suddenly jump out on the highway in front of a oncoming vehicle driving at or above 65 mph:
Someone who has overdosed on lorazepam may experience a wide range of physical and psychological symptoms and exhibit telltale signs including:
Drowsiness.
Disorientation.
Paradoxically increased anxiety or agitation.
Involuntary eye movements.
Blurry vision.
Involuntary muscle contractions.
Reduced muscle strength.
Decreased reflexes and impaired reaction time.
Profoundly lowered blood pressure.
Severely slowed breathing.
Unresponsiveness.
Coma.
Death,
https://drugabuse.com/benzodiazepines/ativan/lorazepam-overdose/
On the other hand, the listed symptoms of an Ativan OD apparently would have significantly slowed Joe’s physical reaction time making it much more difficult for him to jump out of the path of a car moving at or above highway speed that suddenly drifted onto the shoulder directly at him as he walked on the side of the road.