Rachael Rollins, a Biden-appointed U.S. attorney, resigned “after wide-ranging investigations by two federal watchdog agencies found she sought to use her position to influence a local election and lied to investigators,” ABC News reported on Friday, May 19, 2023 (read story here).
Rollins (bio here), 52, as a district attorney in Boston, sought to implement criminal justice reforms that caused Republicans to vote against her Senate confirmation. She was confirmed by a vote of 51-50, with the vice president casting the tiebreaker.
Once in federal office, she came under fire for attending a Democratic fundraiser; federal prosecutors are supposed to avoid politics. Rollins claimed she misunderstood the rules. Then, she was caught meddling in the D.A. election held to replace her, and lying under oath about leaking information to the press.
What she did wasn’t exactly corrupt, but it violated the federal Hatch Act and ethics rules, and lying under oath is a crime.
U.S. attorneys are presidential appointees, and serve at the pleasure of the president; if Rollins hadn’t resigned, Biden would have fired her. The only Trump-appointed U.S. attorney still in office is the one investigating Biden’s son.