Despicable...and Disqualifying

Politics at It Ugliest

Yesterday, trying to get ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy—the new favorite in the GOP primary for Ohio Governor—Ohio Attorney General David Yost moved up his formal announcement that he too plans to run for Governor.

And as with many of the Ohio GOPers, there’s much to discuss:

• For one, his role in ECOT, where, as State Auditor, he bestowed ECOT (the video is here) the “Auditor of State’s Award with Distinction” (Yes, they were cooking the books at the time— but he used his official office to honor them for their outstanding bookkeeping.)

• Then there’s his ongoing effort to conceal documents and avoid being deposed about the involvement of the Republican Attorneys General Association (of which he is a member) in the planning and execution of January 6. Why should Ohioans not to get to see these documents, and how his office and other Attorneys General were involved?

• And despite Issue 1 (protecting reproductive freedom) passing in November 2023, Yost is still using your taxpayer dollars to fight to uphold parts of Ohio’s law imposing six-week abortion ban—even though his own office (and he) explained before Issue 1 passed that it would render the six-week ban and many other anti-abortion laws unconstitutional.

Yes, I could go through all these and other examples to make the case that Dave Yost is absolutely unfit to serve as Governor of Ohio.

But I really don’t need to rehearse all those details.

Because beyond this highly problematic overall record—where he’s essentially been serving as the lawyer for Ohio’s far right as opposed to the people of Ohio—there is something far more awful that Dave Yost did, not that long ago.

A single episode.

But one so downright appalling, it is disqualifying all on its own.

So unforgivable, that nothing else matters, and there is nothing to be done or said to overcome it.

And it is the despicable way Yost treated the most vulnerable of victims in the state of Ohio—from a position (Attorney General) whose core mission is to protect Ohio victims.

Here’s the terrible and disqualifying story…

Yost Rushes To Lock in Dobbs

Within an hour of the Dobbs decision coming down, Attorney General Yost rushed to federal court to remove the injunction on Ohio’s six week abortion ban, which has no exceptions for rape or incest. The ban had previously been struck down as an obvious violation of Roe, but per Yost’s motion following Dobbs, the federal court felt compelled to reverse course. Yost was awfully proud of this action…

…and the ban immediately became the law in the state of Ohio. Partly because of the rush, chaos reigned in the state of Ohio.

A Young Victim Emerges, Needing Care

Within weeks of Yost’s frenzied activity, and as the nation reeled from the shock of Dobbs and its impact, perhaps the most searing and high-profile repercussion of the case arose in Ohio.

A story emerged from Indiana of a ten-year old rape victim (nine at the time of the rape) from Ohio, impregnated by that rape, being forced to travel to Indiana for the abortion care she needed. She was forced to go to our neighboring state because, due to Yost rushing to court so quickly, she could not get that care in Ohio.

The story quickly got national attention.

Yost Goes on Gaslighting Offense

As he did to effectuate Dobbs, in swooped AG Yost again. 

To advocate for the victim of such a heinous crime? (which is, after all, one of the core responsibilities of an Attorney General).

Nope. 

To gaslight her, in front of the entire nation.

That’s right, Yost ran to national TV—FOX News, of course—to cast doubt on her story—and even her existence.

He told Jesse Watters (because if you want to talk seriously about an issue as serious as rape of a child, of course you talk with Jesse Watters) that there is “not a whisper anywhere” to support the story. And then, creating the false impression that the Attorney General has his ear to the ground of all law enforcement cases in the state, he added: “I know our prosecutors and cops in this state. There’s not one of them that wouldn’t be turning over every rock in their jurisdiction if they had the slightest hint that this occurred there.”

(You can watch the interview HERE).

In a later interview with USA Today, Yost doubled down:

“Every day that goes by the more likely that this is a fabrication. I know the cops and prosecutors in this state. There's not one of them that wouldn't be turning over every rock, looking for this guy and they would have charged him…I'm not saying it could not have happened. What I'm saying to you is there is not a damn scintilla of evidence."

To be clear, Yost is using the official position of Attorney General—surrounded by law books, displaying his official AG pin, the fact that his office conducts DNA tests and in touch with local law enforcement—to add credibility to his gaslighting effort. He would know, he was insisting, because he is law enforcement.

By the way, he also lashed out at the Indianapolis paper for running the story at all—“shame on the Indianapolis paper that ran this thing on a single source who has an obvious axe to grind.”

In sum, the guy who rushed to court to make sure an abortion ban, no exceptions for rape or incest, became the law of Ohio immediately, follows that up by rushing to a national propaganda network, speaks authoritatively as Attorney General, so he can cast doubt on a story that had painfully demonstrated just how horrific the consequences of his own actions (and such extreme laws) are.

It shouldn’t even be a story, he insisted.

Yost’s performance had the desired impact. After all, if the Attorney General of Ohio is saying this, it must be true, right? Because, as he claimed, he would know.

Others like Jim Jordan jumped into the gaslighting frenzy, and within hours, the entire nation was being told that the story was false.  Unsupported. Made up by the left and amplified by untrustworthy local journalism. And they accused Joe Biden of misleading the nation when he brought up the young Ohio victim.

And then….

The Truth Comes Out

…the very next day, in the very same county where Ohio’s Attorney General office is based—ie. right under the nose of Yost, who had claimed to know the goings on of law enforcement across the entire state—the Columbus Dispatch broke the story that a man was being charged that day with the exact crime that Yost said there was no evidence of.

Furthermore, Columbus police had actually known about the case after the victim’s mother had filed a report weeks before with a local children’s services agency.

So, yes, it was all true!

Yost had said there wasn’t a “damn scintilla of evidence.” He said that he knew the “cops in this state” would be “turning over every rock in their jurisdiction if they had the slightest hint that this occurred.”

Yet it turned out, the cops were already acting based on evidence of the rape…and it was Yost himself who’d rushed to national TV “without turning over every rock,” including those in his own backyard.

When interviewed later, Yost refused to apologize for his appalling behavior, daring to say to the interviewer in as cold a tone as you can imagine: “I don’t understand what you think I need to apologize for.” Jim Jordan also refused to apologize.

By the way, even though Yost failed in his effort to make the story go away, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita picked up the baton from there, doing all he could to punish the Indiana doctor who treated the young Ohio victim. The suspension Rokita sought was rejected. Later, the Supreme Court of Indiana reprimanded and fined Rokita for violating Indiana Rules of Professional Conduct in the way he discussed the case to the public.

Let’s be clear—the goal of all these officials was to blur the tragic consequences of their own extremism from alarming and mobilizing Americans to stand up against them.  Whether it was questioning victims themselves—not just their stories, but their very existence—or punishing those who treated them, or scolding newspapers for covering their stories, they wanted those stories to be lost, or questioned, or doubted.

They wanted them to just go away—censored out of the conversation—so Americans don’t see the consequences of their horrific policies. And they used the official nature of their roles to lend legitimacy to what were clearly highly politicized missions.

And if that means an Attorney General publicly runs over a child victim of rape, or a doctor who treated her, or going to politicized and fact-free national media outlets to undermine local media for (thank goodness) doing their difficult jobs, that’s what they’ll do.

And that’s what Dave Yost used the power of the Attorney General’s office to do.

It’s all disturbing.  Sick.

But in this instance, they failed.

Yost failed.

Backfired

He failed in the short-term, and in the long-term:

Once local journalists confirmed the story (yes, a reminder of why local journalism is so damn important), the young victim’s case continued to gain national headlines. It became one of too many real-life examples of the tragic and unjust consequences of Dave Yost’s and Jim Jordan’s and so many extremist legislatures’ policies.

And it became one of the events that so horrified Ohioans, that it sparked an incredible grassroots effort to gather signatures to amend Ohio’s Constitution as soon as possible—to protect women and girls in the future from the appalling treatment that that young victim received in Ohio. And to keep politicians like Yost from interfering with their rights, healthy and safety.

Incredibly, on the day these activists turned in more than 700,000 signatures(!) to get that Amendment on the ballot, just blocks from the submission of those petitions, the rapist whose very existence Ohio’s Attorney General tried to deny to the nation, pled guilty to the rape of that young Ohioan. And he will be in prison for the rest of his life. And the national news carried the story.

In the end, Issue 1 (which Yost of course opposed) ultimately passed decisively in November 2023. But as I wrote above, Yost is still trying to undermine its full effect in court.

Sometimes, There are No Do-Overs

So I ask you—should a man who engaged in such appalling behavior…

…an Attorney General, meant to protect victims, but who instead proactively tried to convince the nation that a young victim didn’t even exist…

…a man who later said “I don’t understand what you think I need to apologize for”…

…get a promotion to be Governor of the state of Ohio, which would position him to use all the powers of that office to be as politically aggressive and shameful as he was in this case?

My answer is: never.

And never forget what he tried (and failed) to do.

Day 54 — January 23, 2025

Amid a flurry of additional actions and orders, the Trump administration ordered federal workers to “report” on one another as to who was working in diversity and equity positions, which have been slated for elimination.

Thousands of emails were sent stating: “We are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise these programs by using coded or imprecise language.” Workers were told to report on one another about such situations—“failure to report this information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences.”