What we know about the ethics investigation into Rachael Rollins

The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Rachael Rollins, will resign Friday. Her decision to step down comes amid an internal ethics probe under the Department of Justice. The DOJ office has not yet released its findings.

GBH’s Senior Investigative Reporter Phillip Martin sat down with All Things Considered host Arun Rath to discuss her resignation and her tenure as the state’s top lawyer. The following transcript has been edited for clarity.

Arun Rath: I feel like I’m, at best, dimly aware of this ethics investigation. Can you tell us about the contours of the investigation, why it was launched and what it covered?

Phillip Martin: The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which is part of the Justice Department and considered an independent part that investigates internal issues and problems within the Justice Department, was investigating Rollins because of her attendance at a fundraiser last year in Massachusetts, which Jill Biden had attended.

She had basically arrived at this event in a government car, and this was all considered a violation of what’s called the Hatch Act, which bars federal employees such as herself from taking part in what are perceived as partisan political activities. This fundraiser, of course, fits that category. Someone reported her, and it added fuel to the fire set by people like Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who had militated against Rollins’ nomination in the first place.

So when you have a Justice Department led by Garland, who had pledged to have a drama-free Justice Department, he had no choice but to convene an investigation into this activity. It’s believed that perhaps she is stepping down ahead of the announcement of what the U.S. Office of Special Counsel had determined. Their determination was made in April, so she knows what it was. It’ll be made public sometime this month.

Rath: You mentioned Sen. Tom Cotton, a right-wing senator from Arkansas — one might even say extremely right-wing. He was very prominent during her very contentious confirmation hearing in 2021. This had to do with her progressive reputation, going back to when she was Suffolk County district attorney. Tell us a little bit about this, what a “progressive prosecutor” means and why she bothered those particular senators.

Martin: Well, as you said, she was — and is — considered a progressive lawmaker, period. When she was elected, beating out a string of primary opponents in 2018, and then won the general election and took office in 2019 as Suffolk County district attorney. She came into office on a pledge to reform that office, which meant that she had pledged not to prosecutive 15 nonviolent offenses.

Now, of course, it depended on the circumstances, but Sen. Tom Cotton and other Republicans called this pro-criminal ideology. That’s a silly comment because it makes no sense. She comes from a law enforcement background; she was a former assistant prosecutor. She has prosecuted crimes for years and throughout her professional career. But this was, again, considered pro-criminal, as was anything that addressed issues of reform.

And she is a reformist, like the person she admired most: Larry Krasner, a progressive district attorney in Philadelphia. Then, there are people like George Gascon, a progressive D.A. in Los Angeles. There are other progressive D.A.s around the country that were under fire from Republicans, who called their progressive stance “pro-criminal.” So she has always been under fire from conservatives, but particularly from extreme right-wing conservatives like Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.

One thing that’s important, Arun, is that she’s accused of violating the Hatch Act. Like I said, Garland’s Justice Department is one that wanted no drama, but you’ll find that during the Trump administration, there were 13 violations of the Hatch Act that were essentially never prosecuted — they were looked into but never really prosecuted. So I just want to point the juxtaposition between the Justice Department and the previous Justice Department under Donald Trump.

Rath: You actually anticipated my next question. Because we’re talking about the Hatch Act, there were those 13 — and 13 may even be a conservative estimate of the number of violations during the Trump administration.

When it comes to the question of equal enforcement of these standards, it’s really impossible for all of us to ignore the issue of race. Rollins is a Black woman — an outspoken Black woman. We talk about her being a progressive prosecutor, the first Black woman to serve as U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts and being tagged as pro-crime. Do you think that people of color, or people in general, are going to see this as Rollins getting a raw deal because of who she is?

Martin: I think without question. We have to assume that some of this is in play. When you look at social media comments about Rollins, when people are talking behind closed doors or in the basement of their mother’s homes, they’re throwing out a bunch of racial epithets to describe her.

In polite company, the type of thing you’ll hear from people like Sen. Cotton is that her attention to crime is “pro-criminal.” Again, that makes no sense, but that is the type of framing that you see for this African American and now soon-to-be-former U.S. Attorney. She’s handing in her resignation this coming Friday. Race has, without question, from the point of view of many people, played a role in her excoriation by many.

Police unions who have sided against Rollins on numerous occasions say it has nothing to do with race; it has to do with her policies. But then again, to label something as criminal when, in fact, her method and approach to crime have proven effective. There was an independent review from the National Bureau of Economic Research that found that her practice of not prosecuting low-level crimes in Suffolk County actually worked and that only 24% of those defendants returned to court for another offense within two years, compared with 57% of defendants whose misdemeanor charges were fully prosecuted.

So what is called progressive and pro-criminal has actually been effective in reducing crime.