A Herald request for the interview transcripts behind the Department of Justice’s Office of Special Counsel’s investigation into ex-U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins has been denied in full, with the agency citing “personal privacy” exceptions.
“I am writing in response to your request dated May 19, 2023, in which you asked the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to provide you with ‘the complete transcripts of the OIG interviews with U.S. Attorney and all others interviewed,’” Chauncey Lawson of the agency’s FOIA team wrote in a Friday letter to this reporter..
“In reviewing your request under the FOIA, OSC identified 183 pages of responsive records,” his letter continued. “However, all 183 pages will be withheld in full” under three exemptions to the law.
Those are exemption 5, which “protects from disclosure inter-agency or intra-agency information that is normally protected from discovery in civil litigation based on one or more legal privileges (including, in this instance, the deliberative process and attorney work product privileges)”; exemption 6, which “protects information if disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”; and exemption 7(c), which “protects law enforcement information if disclosure could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Rollins resigned from the office of U.S. Attorney on May 19 in the wake of two blistering reports from two Department of Justice watchdog bureaus: The Office of Special Counsel and the Office of the Inspector General. Both reports found she had extensively violated federal ethics rules from using her position to score Celtics tickets to illegally sharing confidential information on ongoing federal cases to reporters to score political points for friends and hurt rivals.
“We found Rollins’s conduct … violated federal regulations, numerous DOJ policies, her Ethics Agreement, and applicable law, and fell far short of the standards of professionalism and judgment that the Department should expect of any employee, much less a U.S. Attorney,” the OIG report concluded.
It was not much better from the OSC, which concluded her actions “committed an extraordinary abuse of her power.”
The Herald, which filed FOIA requests to both agencies and is still awaiting a response on the other one, has 90 days from the date of the response letter to appeal the OSC’s denial.
President Biden nominated Rollins, who was the Suffolk County District Attorney at the time, in July 2021. She went through a contentious confirmation process that culminated in Vice President Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote on Dec. 8, 202.
Rollins’ downfall all started in July of last year, when a Herald reporter asked her if it was a violation of the Hatch Act to keep walking into a DNC fundraiser in Andover to see First Lady Jill Biden. The act is an ethical roadmap for top federal employees.
Rollins told the Herald, “No.”