U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins exchanged more than 380 messages with City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo in the run-up to last year’s Suffolk District Attorney primary, according to a federal report on her ethical violations — and at some point, those communications switched from plain text to encrypted platforms.
“Whether you’re an FBI agent or a U.S. Attorney, you can’t have a secret network,” said Jim Wedick, a retired FBI agent and public corruption expert. “It denies us the right to honest, good government. It smacks of a separate network. Everybody knows it’s not allowed. It’s preventing citizens from knowing her thoughts.”
A review of Rollins’ phone by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General during their ethics inquiry into her actions uncovered significant engagement with Arroyo, her preferred candidate, in his race against eventual winner Kevin Hayden. Rollins, through her attorney, announced on Tuesday, a day before two federal reports on her ethics violations, that she would resign by Friday.
Those 2022 communications ahead of the primary included, per the report, lengthy phone calls on July 29, July 29 and Aug. 17 — as well as more than 380 messages. Those messages switched over from texts to encrypted communications when Arroyo on Aug. 19 began using such a service, but the specific service was not disclosed in the report.
Popular encrypted communication platforms include WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram. They offer end-to-end encryption — though the platform described in the report, which includes the words “such that no one can read or listen to them, including the messaging service,” most likely rules out WhatsApp, as the platform requires data sharing with parent company Meta, per a 2021 privacy policy change.
Investigators asked Rollins if she had ever felt concerned that her communications with Arroyo might violate her legal and ethical obligations under DOJ policy or the Hatch Act — a federal law barring certain political activities of federal employees “to ensure that federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion.”
“I didn’t because I believed I was having them in my individual capacity. They were not public,” she said.
But the report states she also said, “I’m not saying these communications are appropriate.”
The eventual use of an encrypted messaging platform could suggest that Rollins was suffering from some “consciousness of guilt,” said Donald Sherman, the executive vice president and chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan organization focused on government transparency and ethics commonly known by its acronym, CREW.
“In many ways you’d want people to use government devices for government uses, and personal devices for personal business,” he told the Herald Thursday. “I think the problem here is that she was impermissibly mixing her government work with her political work.”
He said that “It’s good that Ms. Rollins resigns,” as “This conduct is widely out of step with the practices and guidance for federal employees across administrations.”
Sherman said that he hopes such a prominent Hatch Act violation report will create “an appetite for reform” and increase its enforcement.
