This morning, on the floor of the VA State Senate – with under five days until election day on Tuesday – Senators Jennifer Boysko and Scott Surovell explained very clearly why Jason Miyares has been a horrendous Attorney General who most certainly does NOT deserve to be reelected.
First, see below for Sen. Boysko discussing this travesty:
“Attorney General Jason Miyares regularly claims that he protects crime victims. His news releases trumpet his commitment to standing with those who’ve suffered violence. His speeches echo with promises to fight for the vulnerable. But when Katie Orndoff — a domestic violence victim — needed him most, he failed her. Worse, he fought to keep her locked up…
…when the case reached the Court of Appeals, Attorney General Miyares’ office didn’t stand with Katie Orndoff. When the Court of Appeals dismissed the case, he appealed to try to get her convicted and petitioned for en banc review. The Court of Appeals ultimately deadlocked 6-6 and ultimately affirmed her conviction by an equally divided court.
When Orndoff appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia, Miyares opposed her appeal. Only when the Virginia Supreme Court took the case did justice finally prevail. In a blistering opinion — effectively calling the judge out for misrepresenting the facts…
Attorney General Miyares is never shy about holding news conferences to tout his support for victims. Yet when Katie Orndoff, an alleged domestic violence victim having the courage to testify, was unjustly convicted and faced jail time (and may I remind you was placed in a straightjacket), his office fought to keep that conviction in place. Not once did his office acknowledge that jailing a crime victim for being anxious and animated while testifying against her abuser was wrong.
Attorney General Miyares failed Katie Orndoff. After witnessing this gross injustice, I have a question: If you won’t stand up for victims when they’re being unjustly prosecuted by the very system they turned to for protection, what exactly does your commitment to crime victims mean?”
Just horrific; seriously, this story ALONE should disqualify Miyares from being Attorney General.
Next, here’s Senator Scott Surovell explaining why Miyares “has not done a good job”; “has politicized this office like no AG ever had”; “has turned this office into nothing more than a political sideshow for President Trump”; etc.
“Our Attorney General has not done a good job. He reversed an opinion by Attorney General Herring about the validity of earn sentence credits and their applicability because he decided to change his opinion. Our Department of Corrections chose not to release certain people – that was found wrong by a court. And for that pleasure, we had to pay $1.8 million to dozens of people who were wrongfully incarcerated because the Attorney General wanted to play politics with the law instead of calling the law like it is.
He decided to appeal the RGGI case. The courts found he was wrong on that. He told the governor he’d keep his tipline record secret. The court found he was wrong on that. He told our hospitals that they couldn’t do gender affirming care. The court found he was wrong on that. He tried to appeal Thomas Jefferson’s admissions policies. Courts denied his appeals on that.
He made this big massive probe into Loudoun County, which basically resulted in no convictions after spending a ton of time on it. He prosecuted the Prince William County election registar, using his new election integrity unit – that went nowhere, I think it got dismissed. He launched a probe into the Fairfax public schools national merit scholarships thing, independent law firm found nothing happened.
He decided to defend Madame President Pro Tempore and my Privileges and Elections Committee members’ efforts to reject some of the Gov. Youngkin’s board appointees. A judge found he was wrong on that. I guess we’ll find out later this month or next month whether the Supreme Court agrees with the trial judge on that.
He was just blocked last week by US District Court judge over an investigation he tried to do about a Palestinian charity. A tactic I would point out, by the way, that was used during segregation to investigate the NAACP over massive resistance. He decided to use that tactic. US District Court judge found just like it did back in 1950, the First Amendment says you can’t go poking around in membership records.
And I would just like to point out just two days ago…Cardinal News decided to investigate his claims about earned sentence credits. And they basically found that the records showed that everything he claimed in his press release about people in earned sentence credits committing murders was largely false. Once they actually went and looked at the data, I think they found that something like out of the 80 people or out of the 78 people he claimed gone on to commit murder, it was only 13 or something like that. They asked him for comment. He didn’t really have much to say about about that.
We have an Attorney General, folks, who has politicized this office like no AG ever has. He fired like 30 people when he came in, got rid of their entire civil rights division. And he continues to do it on a daily basis. Just yesterday, he had a chance to file to protect our people that receive SNAP. He could have joined the AGs all around the country to get the federal government to pay SNAP – and he declined. We have people that have lost their jobs and not been paid…Virginia people, federal workers who work in Virginia because he refuses to stand up to Donald Trump.
This Attorney General has turned this office into nothing more than a political sideshow for President Trump. And that’s what I think voters are going to look at and decide their race on once they’ve had a chance to reflect on it.”
