After Tuesday's Heckova April 12 birthday present? Committee report recommends no Ravnsborg impeachment we continue to digest the latest in Jason Ravnsborg news.
The South Dakota House committee investigating Ravnsborg recommended no impeach on Monday. A couple of articles we'd missed: Christopher Vondracek's Impeachment report offers Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg benefit of doubt on fatal crash where we learn:
A 21-page report issued on Monday, March 28, by a House committee appears to offer Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg numerous benefits of the doubt in recommending Ravnsborg not be impeached for striking and killing a man with his vehicle in 2020.
Specifically, the committee's majority expressed doubt in an earlier investigation by South Dakota Highway Patrol that found all four tires of Ravnsborg's Ford Taurus had left the lane of traffic when he fatally struck pedestrian Joe Boever, 55, of Highmore, South Dakota, in September 2020.
The committee honed in on an errant bone fragment and noted Ravnsborg's own testimony appeared to undercut the fact in the case, previously accepted by both prosecutors and investigators.
"It appears that his vehicle may have left his lane of travel and drifted to the right onto the shoulder where he struck and killed Joe Boever," the committee report says.
However, the committee's GOP majority said they'd yet to be given a sufficient explanation why a bone fragment from Boever landed "close to the lane of traffic" and not in the grass. . . .
However, the majority report veered on all the impeachable offenses, splitting hairs over Oxford commas and the definition, for example, of "corrupt conduct." . . .
The Associated Press's Stephen Groves reported in SD House committee points to ‘in office’ clause to clear AG:
Republicans on a South Dakota House committee want to clear the state’s attorney general of impeachment charges for his actions surrounding a 2020 fatal car crash, arguing that anything wrong he did was not part of his work “in office.”
But those pushing to remove Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg from office are not giving up before the full House convenes in two weeks.
A House committee concluded its monthslong inquiry late Monday by voting 6-2 on party lines to recommend that Ravnsborg, a Republican, face no impeachment charges. Its 21-page majority report repeatedly cites a clause in the state constitution that says officials can be impeached for actions “in office” and argues most of Ravnsborg’s actions surrounding the crash were not done in his official capacity as attorney general or were not done with “an evil or corrupt motive.” . . .
We'd noted in our post that as of yesterday evening, Joe Sneve had tweeted an article, Jason Ravnsborg impeachment, investigation files remain hidden from public inspection for now. Sneve's sources speculated it could take weeks for the files to see the light of day.
As Cory Allen Heidelberger put in at Dakota Free Press, Holwegner Refuses to Give Press Ravnsborg Impeachment Investigation Files, Tells Public to Quit Pestering Him to Do His Job.
Some reporters tried. At Keloland, Bob Mercer reports in ‘Ravnsborg report’ and investigative file released:
The House Select Committee on Investigation posted its final report and a redacted public version of its file on the Legislative Research Council website Wednesday regarding the possible impeachment of South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg.
The link to the hundreds of files is here.
The panel of nine representatives looked into whether an impeachable offense was committed during or after the crash on September 12, 2020, when a car driven by Ravnsborg struck and killed pedestrian Joe Boever at the west edge of Highmore.
The state released hundreds of pages of documents and photos from the investigation including photos of the Attorney General’s car and of Boever’s broken glasses, which were found in Ravnsborg’s vehicle.
The committee voted 6-2 Monday night against recommending the impeachment of Ravnsborg. The full House of Representatives returns to the state Capitol on April 12 to vote on the matter.
Posting of the 30-gigabyte file took legislative staff several days to accomplish.
The House is considering his impeachment under a special session that began on November 9, 2021. House Republican leader Kent Peterson of Salem sponsored the resolution establishing the special committee. It passed 58-10.
Representative Will Mortenson, R-Pierre, had sponsored an impeachment resolution during the 2021 regular session. Peterson and House Democrat leader Jamie Smith of Sioux Falls co-sponsored it.
House Speaker Spencer Gosch, R-Glenham, later amended Mortenson’s resolution. The Gosch version said the House “may evaluate whether articles of impeachment” were appropriate.
There's a somewhat different take at the Argus Leader; Sneve, Jonathan Ellis and Nicole Ki report in What we learned about Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg's crash from newly released documents:
The House Select Committee on Investigation is expected to publicly release dozens of documents the committee explored during their impeachment investigation the last three months.
The documents come on the heels of Monday's decision by the committee not to recommend the House of Representatives impeach South Dakota's attorney general for his role in a fatal September 2020 crash, according to a 22-page report.
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg struck and killed Joe Boever while he was driving from a political event the night of Sept. 12, 2020.
Nearly a year passed before he faced charges stemming from the crash, and ultimately he accepted a plea deal and was convicted of a pair of minor driving infractions that did not amount to criminal culpability for the death of the 55-year-old Hyde County man.
Led by House Speaker Spencer Gosch, R-Glenham, the nine-member House Select Committee on Investigation spent hours behind closed doors, starting in December and in subsequent meetings in January. The redacted information from 60 of 65 materials available to them related to the September 2020 crash.
Those materials include investigation reports, video footage of interviews and interrogations with the attorney general and autopsy photographs.
Beyond a 13-page report explaining what details of the crash investigation the public will never have access to, nothing has been released publicly since, except for whatever has been publicly discussed during impeachment proceedings.
Here's a closer look at what we're learning from these documents as they're released:
Note: Refresh this page throughout the evening for updates:
Go over a read the details--some gory--at the Argus Leader.
But there's more. The Associated Press also reported on Tuesday, South Dakota AG investigating billboards pushing impeachment:
The South Dakota attorney general’s office on Tuesday said it will launch an investigation into whether state campaign finance disclosure laws were broken by a political organization that sponsored billboards to push state lawmakers to impeach Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg.
The attorney general’s chief of staff, Tim Bormann, said the office has received two formal complaints about the billboards, and it was still determining how the investigation would be handled given the potential conflict of interest over the billboards.
“A decision has not been made yet on whether those will be handled internally or if they will be handled by an outside entity,” Bormann said.
An organization launched to further Gov. Kristi Noem’s agenda sponsored the billboards in Sioux Falls this month. The signs demanded Ravnsborg be impeached and named four members of the House committee which has been investigating whether Ravnsborg’s conduct related to a 2020 crash that killed pedestrian Joe Boever.
Ravnsborg’s office first confirmed the investigation to the Argus Leader on Tuesday. The House committee late Monday recommended that Ravnsborg face no impeachment charges, but the full House chamber will convene on April 12 to consider that recommendation.
The nonprofit organization that sponsored the billboards, the Dakota Institute for Legislative Solutions, said in a statement that it “has fully complied with all applicable state laws and regulations in regards to our grassroots-issue advocacy operations. Any allegation or suggestion otherwise is outrageous and defamatory.”
The organization spent over $24,000 for the billboards, but has not disclosed its top donors. Noem and her campaign have denied any involvement in the billboards.
Ah, South Dakota, our adopted home, where the Oxford comma matters.
Photo: The Taurus with which Ravnsborg killed Joseph Boever, who was walking on the shoulder of the road with a flashlight.
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