Someone has to save Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita from himself.
John Krull, editor, TheStatehouseFile.com
In the process, that someone would also save Hoosier taxpayers some money. He has used public funds to hire a Washington DC law firm and local private counsel to help him with his self-destructive dig.
That’s because Rokita’s response when he discovers he’s dug himself into a hole is to drop the shovel and yell for someone to bring him a backhoe. Then he digs that hole deeper and deeper…and deeper.
Some good reporting by Marilyn Odendahl of The Indiana Citizen makes that abundantly clear.
In his latest coverage, Odendahl reveals that, once again, Rokita is the subject of a preliminary investigation by the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission. This investigation is, once again, the result of his mindless campaign to persecute Dr. Caitlin Bernard.
The Indiana Supreme Court has already publicly reprimanded our attorney general once — with two of the five justices saying a slap on the wrist wasn’t enough punishment — and now he could be reprimanded again.
He has no one to blame but himself.
Rokita’s problems with the disciplinary commission began in the summer of 2022.
It was then that Bernard performed an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped. The girl’s mother authorized the abortion. Bernard complied with all appropriate laws in both Indiana and Ohio.
Rokita didn’t bother to find out about any of this before rushing to the Fox News cameras to condemn Bernard in terms not supported in any way by the facts. His statements were so outrageous that even Fox disavowed them.
If Rokita had kept quiet at that point—if he had stopped his digging—he might have been fine, even though he had already made the comments that prompted the Supreme Court to reprimand him.
But he didn’t.
He continued to defame Bernard, who sued him. Much legal wrangling followed, with Rokita, again spending taxpayers’ money, desperately seeking a friendly forum for his fact-free arguments.
He found one at the Indiana Board of Medical Licensing, where a couple of members had made substantial financial contributions to his political campaigns and yet saw no reason to recuse themselves. The board reprimanded Bernard for violating patient confidentiality standards and fined her $3,000, a decision condemned by legal and media ethics experts across the country.
The medical licensing board’s action was criticized nationally for at least two reasons.
One was that Bernard did not share information that was not commonly found in medical journal articles.
The second was that Rokita, who pressed the whistleblower—with expensive private counsel, again at taxpayer expense—revealed all the same information to a much wider audience.
Rokita’s sloppy campaign to prosecute Bernard led to prominent state attorneys filing complaints against Rokita with the disciplinary commission.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court voted, 3-2, to accept a conditional settlement that reprimanded Rokita. In that settlement, Rokita admitted, under penalty of perjury, in an affidavit that he had violated the rules of professional conduct.
Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Christopher Goff were the two dissenters. They felt that Rokita deserved more severe penalties.
The three who voted for Rokita presented him with a sweetheart deal: a chance to walk away from prolonged professional misconduct with just a light tap on the wrist.
Anyone with an iota of sense would have known enough to accept this gift with gratitude and silence.
Not Todd Rokita.
He immediately issued a statement contradicting what he said — again, under penalty of perjury — in the affidavit.
His about-face prompted at least two lawyers, including one with extensive experience enforcing professional conduct rules, to file new complaints.
Thus, the new preliminary investigation, which will likely determine when Rokita was not telling the truth, when he was under oath, or when he was speaking to the citizens of this state.
Rokita’s response to this latest inquiry was more of the same. A statement issued by his office — but to which no one attached his name — blamed “the left” for his problems.
This is the first time anyone has accused Loretta Rush, a devotee of the late US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the most conservative jurist ever to sit on the bench, of being a liberal.
Now, the Indiana Supreme Court has another chance to take the shovel out of Todd Rokita’s hands.
We hope the judges will.
All his digging is getting expensive.
