Virginia Republicans Continue To Clean House As AG Fires Political Appointees And Announces Investigations
Newly elected Attorney General Jason Miyares relieved around 30 staffers in the AG’s office of their duties, over the howling protests of Democrats.
Over the weekend, as Republican Glenn Youngkin was sworn in as Virginia’s new governor and began to take immediate actions, reports emerged that other new Republican elected officials were also cleaning house. Newly elected Attorney General Jason Miyares relieved around 30 staffers in the AG’s office of their duties, over the howling protests of Democrats in Virginia. Miyares has also taken immediate steps to reverse democratic policies on prosecutions for certain crimes, investigate high profile public corruption, and reverse radical climate policy. Reactions were mixed, based on the political perspective of the commenters.
I've been told incoming AG @JasonMiyaresVA just FIRED the entire civil rights division in the Attorney General's office. My bill helped create and expand the authority that this division uses.
— L. Louise Lucas (@SenLouiseLucas) January 14, 2022
— Ron Coleman (@RonColeman) January 16, 2022
Virginia’s new Attorney General has just fired the entire civil rights division in the AG office and announced that he will prosecute criminal cases in jurisdictions where Soros DAs decline to prosecute.
He is also the first PoC Attorney General in Virginia history! pic.twitter.com/cLKHvnoNNQ
— Dr. Benjamin Braddock (@GraduatedBen) January 15, 2022
Based
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 (@ChristinaPushaw) January 15, 2022
This is a great sign of hope that things can get better. Every new AG should take note. These Soros DAs are destroying every city they get their hands on. https://t.co/AjXYWk3TpR
— Amanda Milius (@AmandaMilius) January 15, 2022
So, what really happened?
Miyares, like Youngkin, wasted no time enacting his agenda for the Attorney General’s office. After the January 15 swearing-in ceremony, Miyares informed 30 staffers that their employment had terminated (as reported by Fox News):
Miyares notified about 30 staff members that they will no longer be employed by the office of the attorney general. Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas tweeted that Miyares fired the “entire” civil rights division, which Miyares’s office tells Fox News is not accurate.
“This is incorrect information,” Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said. “There are 12 individuals who work in the Office of Civil Rights – only two personnel changes were made.”
“During the campaign, it was made clear that now Attorney General-elect Miyares and Attorney General Herring have very different visions for the office,” LaCivita told Richmond.com. “We are restructuring the office, as every incoming AG has done in the past.”
In addition, Miyares announced two high profile investigations into public corruption:
One of the reasons Virginians get so fed up with government is the lack of transparency – and that’s a big issue here. The Virginia Parole Board broke the law when they let out murders, rapists, and cop killers early on their sentences without notifying the victims. Loudoun Country Public Schools covered up a sexual assault on school grounds for political gain, leading to an additional assault of a young girl.
Virginians have dealt with the horrific aftermath of these scandals, without understanding how or why they were able to happen.
Virginians deserve answers – they want transparency and accountability.
As a candidate, I promised to investigate these scandals and be as open and transparent as possible – because Virginians deserve nothing less.
As Attorney General, I am proud to say that the process has begun. Investigations by my office into the Parole Board and Loudoun County Public Schools are open.
After his surprise election triumph, Miyares spoke on election night about his priorities when he took office:
Republican Attorney General-elect Jason Miyares—whose transition team includes Loudoun Sheriff Mike Chapman—said wants his office to play a greater role in the prosecution of local criminal cases and that he plans an investigation of sexual assault cases in Loudoun County Public Schools.
During his post-election press conference Thursday, Miyares told reporters he’d be introducing a bill to the General Assembly that would also allow the Attorney General’s Office to intervene in cases when local officials think a local prosecutor isn’t handling the case well.
Currently, county or city prosecutors may request the AG’s Office to handle a local case, but Miyares wants to allow police chiefs and sheriffs also to be able to ask for the state to step in to carry some cases if local prosecutors won’t.
“I’m thinking specifically of some of the so-called social justice commonwealth’s attorneys that have been elected particularly in Northern Virginia,”Miyares said. “We are obviously aware of some pretty horrific cases where they failed to do their job.”
As if the woke mob’s heads couldn’t spin off fast enough, Miyares also withdrew the state from a coalition suing to give the EPA the power to regulate emissions from power plants:
Virginia has dropped out of a coalition of states urging the Supreme Court to find that EPA has broad authority to regulate power plant emissions.
Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), who took office over the weekend after Republicans swept the state in November, tweeted last night that he was “proud to announce Virginia is no longer participating in West Virginia v EPA.”
The tweet signaled Miyares’ rejection of his predecessor’s challenge to a lawsuit launched by coal companies and Republican-led states asking the high court to curb EPA’s authority. The Supreme Court last fall made the extraordinary move to take up the case, which focuses on a regulation that does not currently exist.
Arguments in the case are scheduled for Feb. 28.
West Virginia v. EPA, Miyares said in his tweet, “could devastate the coal industry and the thousands of jobs it supports in Southwest Virginia. Virginia is no longer anti-coal.”
To recap: Miyares has announced investigations into politically motivated coverups of sexual assault in the Loudoun County School District, and into politically motivated and illegal prisoner releases by the state parole board; fired 30 employees hired by his predecessors in the office he now runs; begun the process to initiate prosecutions that Soros district attorneys have failed to bring due to political motivations; and withdrawn from a case brought by several state Attorneys General hoping to get the Supreme Court to appoint the EPA to regulate power plant emissions.
Great to sit down and talk about what I've done, what I'm going to do and what I hope to accomplish as your Attorney General.
We're off to a strong start, Virginia – and it's just the beginning. https://t.co/6OZ378wEOZ
— Jason Miyares (@JasonMiyaresVA) January 20, 2022
I'm proud to announce Virginia is no longer participating in West Virginia v EPA, a lawsuit that could devastate the coal industry and the thousands of jobs it supports in Southwest Virginia.
Virginia is no longer anti-coal.
— Jason Miyares (@JasonMiyaresVA) January 19, 2022
Not bad for his first week.
Jeff Reynolds is the author of the book, “Behind the Curtain: Inside the Network of Progressive Billionaires and Their Campaign to Undermine Democracy,” available at www.WhoOwnsTheDems.com. Jeff hosts a podcast at anchor.fm/BehindTheCurtain. You can follow him on Twitter @ChargerJeff, on Parler at @RealJeffReynolds, and on Gab at @RealJeffReynolds.
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Comments
Wow. I thought Youngkin was the lessor of two evils. I am pleasantly surprised. He is actually doing what he said he would.
What I’m waiting to see is how he works with the VA legislature given one half of it is Democrat-controlled and the other is Republican-controlled.
Well, Miyares is, at any rate. He’s one of the first Republicans I’ve seen lately that understands the difference between being in office and being in power. Given this performance, I would say he has a bright future ahead of him.
Ah, the handwringing over what is a completely normal practice re: firing people. You don’t think Democrats do the same thing when they’re taking over from Republican administrations?
Dumbass RINOs STILL haven’t learned the lesson from the Bush administration. Nobody remembers the insanity where Clinton fired every single US attorney (except a single one on the personal request of a Senator), and then Bush DIDN’T fire the US attorneys at the start of his term and tried to fire a small handful after a few years and they suddenly pitched a fit?
Exactly. The Republicans, every time they take a political office, should immediately fire every single person they are legally able to fire. You’ve got to clean house always because if you leave Democrat picks in those positions those people aren’t working for you. They’re working for the Democratic party.
Democrats understand this and when they take office every position they can fire someone and replace with their own people is done.
Someone needs to remind Louise Lex Luthor Lucas that elections have consequences.
Would you trust the staff of the previous AG? No it’s best to start fresh.
This is where Trump made a mistake–he should have cleaned house as well; I’m looking forward to seeing what the new administration does in Virginia
A big part of the problem for Trump was that Obama people took civil service jobs, and firing a federal civil service employee is incredibly difficult. As well, Senate Democrats deliberately forced cloture votes on hundreds of Trump nominees who otherwise would have been confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent during other administrations, because their dislike of him was greater than making sure he could have a fully functional executive branch.
Yeah that’s very true. The civil service rules impede consequences for bad actors. Perhaps the next r Admin could create a new ‘joint, interagency task force’ with it’s HQ in the Arctic?
Then simply transfer the obstructionist Fed employees to that HQ? They could then choose to resign or accept the transfer. That would clear the decks of those who would work to actively impede the policy goals of the new Admin and very likely demonstrate just how few Fed employees are actually needed to get things done.
No, a big part of the problem is Bitch McConnell openly said he wouldn’t confirm replacements for a whole host of people, refused to hold votes on a whole host of nominees that Trump did name, and then kept the Senate ‘in session’ for FOUR YEARS specifically so Trump could never make recess appointments.
Trump should have called his bluff and fired them anyway.
The system wouldn’t let me up vote 1k. I’ve been saying this for years. Transfer every unneeded federal employee to McMurdo Sound in Antartica.
I hope the next Republican President takes notes on what’s happening in Virginia. Fire every US Attorney and the top three layers of every federal agency. For starters.
In the picture, the AG looks like a Person of Caucasian. Or, am I missing something? It’s early yet.
Agree…I’m part HIspanic and I have never considered myself a person of color…I’m white
Look at my avatar. It’s me. In the eyes of the Keepers of the Pedigrees in the Justice Department, I am Hispanic, Asian, and “African American” ( not black ).
Looks like a bear to me.
Or a Sharp Dressed Man.
I may or may not be Hispanic, depending on whether the eyes of the beholder behold Portuguese people as Hispanic. Some do, while others don’t even behold Spaniards as Hispanic. So I guess whether or not I am a Hispanic to you depends on how racist you are.
I was wondering the same thing.
I think we just have to say it now. Our country is so racist people passing as minorities now.
Actually Ibraham X. Kendi actually said that.
Then, embarrassed to have shot himself in the foot, he deleted it.
I don’t know his dad’s heritage, but his mother is a Cuban exile.
So, Person Of Cuban?
People in our race obsessed society often conflate race and ethnicity. Activists consider Hispanics to be “brown” people, not understanding that neither “brown” nor Hispanic is a race.
His mom was from Cuba.
He’s a “white Hispanic” (homo zimmermani).
I think it’s way past time to stop the LABELING of people! Who cares and what should it matter if a person is white, brown, black, red, tan, yellow, or any color? What should matter is if that person is HONEST and FAIR and BELIEVES IN AMERICA! That’s it! The left makes a great deal of a person’s skin tone, sexual “preference”, and “preferred pronouns”. They could care less about the person’s intellect, character, or honesty OR their ability to actually do the job! I hope the PLAN that Gov. Youngkin and the others will be shared with other incoming Republicans and they too can be efficient in “cleaning houses”!
But we label the minorities we elect just to be able to stick them in the eye of our opponents, the soi-disant champions of minorities, who nonetheless never seem to nominate them for those positions.
The new team in VA is demonstrating how to get things done. Clear out the deadwood, withdraw from partisan suits and work from day one to create the environment to deliver on their campaign agenda. Amazing contrast to other r who whine and moan but refuse to take the steps necessary to create the conditions to achieve success.
I heard Youngkin changed the name of one office – cabinet level position. Changed Equity to Opportunity. I like the idea. Elections have consequences.
It is a lesson that Trump learned ex post facto, and that the current VA administration is taking to heart: It is best to do such things quickly and pick up the pieces afterward, rather than ease into a new administration one person at a time.
Hopefully, future Republican presidents will learn from this experience and have their lists of Day One Political Appointees To Be Given A Cardboard Box Full Of Their Desk Contents And Shown The Door.
In Trumps defense he went along with the RINO recommendations that were in place to limit his abilities. McConnell never adjourned the Senate so there were no recess appointments. They slow walked his nominations. We know what you did RINOs.
You know you started the no-adjournment-so-no-recess-appointments practice? The Democrats when George W. Bush was president. Also, recess appointments are only possible if both houses of Congress are in adjournment for longer than 10 days; if one or both of them wants to be gone longer than 3 days that requires an adjournment resolution which must be agreed to by both bodies, otherwise here come the pro formas.
Democrats doing it to Republicans, and Republicans doing it to Democrats, is just politics.
Never, in the history of the US, has a Senate done it to a President from their own party for FOUR YEARS. It is literally unprecedented.