Attorney General Tregarrick Taylor, who has resigned and will likely join the swollen field of candidates for governor, is pandering for all he’s worth on his way out the door.
Taylor says there was a blanket corruption complaint against all the department leaders and a grand jury will investigate. Complaints about corruption in the department will immediately be referred to independent prosecutors, he says.
The Department of Law will sign off on the claims with little or no thought and forward them to independent prosecutors as long as he is in charge, he said.
He said “we’re on notice that many people are gonna be filing cases, so we’re gonna be busy for a little while.” He said the state may have to recruit prosecutors from Outside who have no ties to Alaska to handle the business.
But Taylor is quitting his state job on August 29, so his ideas about flooding the state with grand jury proceedings may end on August 30.
Taylor is competing for support among the right-wing zealots aligned with David Haeg, a chronic complainer who has pursued a personal vendetta against an enormous cast of characters for 20 years, claiming he has discovered corruption here, there and everywhere.
A flood of baseless accusations has been a standard part of Haeg’s repertoire since he was convicted of illegally shooting wolves from an airplane.
A jury convicted Haeg of five counts of unlawful acts by a guide, hunting wolves the day he was airborne, two counts of unlawful possession of game, one count of lying, and trapping wolverine out of season.
He has lost three appeals to the Alaska Court of Appeals, the most recent in 2021. Those court decisions are known as Haeg 1, Haeg 2 and Haeg 3.
Haeg has accused his own attorneys, police, prosecutors, all members of the Alaska Supreme Court, as well as many other judges, district attorneys and others of crimes too numerous to mention. His enemies list grows longer all the time and many right-wing politicians are eager to pander to him.
Haeg wants a grand jury to investigate his myriad of claims of corruption. The soon-to-be-ex-attorney general wants to give it to him, although Haeg and his followers aren’t satisfied with Taylor and attack him as an enemy of the people.
Here is background on Haeg and his litany of complaints.
At a Kenai meeting on August 18 at which Taylor made his pitch to Haeg and his supporters, Taylor said he would act like a “blindfolded goalie” when citizens complained to the state and demand grand jury investigations. This was before Taylor announced the timing of his resignation.
The new rules for investigative grand juries call for a deliberative process in which an independent committee of qualified state attorneys would review the complaint and decide whether it should be forwarded or rejected.
Taylor said regardless of the rules about weighing the merits of complaints about corruption, he would see to it that there would be little scrutiny under his watch.
“Under the rules not everything would go through, right? And that’s one of the issues, right? And when I’m the gatekeeper, and so this gatekeeper is gonna be like the blindfolded goalie and a lot things are gonna get through because, first of all, public trust is at an all-time low. And we got to do something about that, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna let most things through,” he said.
About things that would not get through to a grand jury, he mentioned that something like a property dispute would be blocked by the Department of Law. Matters of public welfare, public safety and corruption claims will not be blocked.
“I’m intending to let anything close go by because I think right now we need to sort of re-instill public confidence in the process. And so again I don’t what to be the gatekeeper. So I’m gonna take that as I can make those decisions and use my discretion to let more cases go through than probably actually meet what the court rules state,” he said.
He said that corruption complaints about him and the Department of Law, as of last month, will be “immediately” forwarded to an outside attorney hired by the state as an independent prosecutor.
“In fact, we have one now we’ve received that we’ve already pushed out to an independent prosecutor because it implicates pretty much all of the leadership of the Department of Law. So that is now in the hands of an independent prosecutor and that prosecutor will empanel a grand jury, an investigative grand jury here in the next few weeks,” Taylor said.
“And the grand jury will decide what they do with that case. Again, all of the power and control is, is with the grand jury at that point. And, and that, and the independent prosecutor is really there to be their legal counsel, right? ‘Hey, how do we, how do we subpoena this witness? How do we, how do we get these documents? How do we file this motion with the court? How do we get rid of you, the independent prosecutor and hire a new prosecutor.’ All those things . . . in this particular case an independent prosecutor will answer those questions,” Taylor said.
At least three times during his appearance to explain the grand jury procedure, Taylor told Haeg “We agree on more than you think David.”
When Haeg went into one of his regular rants about how John Skidmore, deputy attorney general, allegedly lied to some politicians in a meeting about what had happened in a grand jury proceeding, Taylor invited Haeg to submit a formal complaint under the new state process set up last month.
“David, please submit this,” Taylor said.
“I have, how many times?” Haeg said.
What about using the new process? Taylor said.
“I’m telling you right now David, if you submit that claim I will push it to a grand jury,” Taylor told Haeg.
That is not how any attorney general should behave. It’s not how any candidate for governor should behave.
The video below is of the entire Kenai meeting.
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