I’ve been crazy busy with work this week as I head towards a couple days away from my desk to take my son to his assignment aboard the USS Montana (look it up, very cool). But in the midst of my prep. I did have a few moments to catch this article from the Mitchell Republic on impeachment.
It’s very interesting, as it mirrors much of what I’ve heard behind the scenes, that impeachment was not necessarily certain, but a few factors did drive the undecideds.
One factor was how the report of the committee spent way too much time dwelling on the Governor expressing her opinion, as opposed to doing the job they were actually there to do. Another, as cited in the article, was the letter from the Attorney General on the eve of impeachment:
While Koth said Ravnsborg’s letter was very well-written, he believes the attorney general should’ve taken the opportunity to speak to the House Select Committee, instead of waiting until the night before the vote to speak out.
“It was troubling to me that it was sent at that time, the night before we had special session,” Koth said. “It was troubling to me that he, for whatever reason, had chosen not to testify or talk with the committee. My understanding was he was invited to, not subpoenaed, so it troubled me that he didn’t put forth his side of the information prior to [the impeachment vote].”
We’ve got another 60 days until the entire matter comes to a head at the Senate Impeachment trial. I’m sure we’re going to hear far more on the topic.
The main factor driving the undecideds I have heard is the threats and promises of the Governor…not the facts of the case.
If you look at numbers also most undecideds who had a race broke for impeachment.
If they did not have an opponent or not running again they broke against impeachment.
That is the real story here.
I heard the same thing, Noem’s people strong-armed as many as they could into voting for impeachment vs looking at the facts.
Ravnsborg had a chance to discuss the facts before the committee and refused up until the last second when he sent a letter to the main body that he couldnt be cross examined on. It doesn’t seem like Jason is very interested in fact finding either.
Seriously, the facts have been released and none of them supported Impeachment legally. It was all political.
Bull. His actions after the fact, his nonsensical story about what happened, as well as available evidence from the investigation very much support impeachment.
What evidence???? Give specifics.
If the facts were all released, then Gosch wouldn’t have withheld information from the public, which he clearly did. Believe what you want to believe, but don’t claim that all the facts have been released.
Wait legislators had to make political choices when voting? They could side with a mean governor or side with the equivalent of political cement shoes? And incompetent cement shoes at that who also liked to flash a badge to get out of speeding tickets.
One thing the impeachment committee failed at was to look through a lense of regular people and their colleagues. They looked through it as the lens of attorneys and the house is not a courtroom. It is a political body.
JR has caused a lot if grief for conservative legislators going forward. He’s the cement shoes that will sink them.
35-0 vote in senate?
Yes, 35-0 to acquit.
Looks to me like the more interesting story is at South Dakota public broadcasting.
31 similar cases—20 no charges at all and the other 11 were minor traffic citations.
I read the story. The other examples have some reason for the distraction – weather, victim was intoxicated or down towards the ground, in the roadway, etc.
Secondly, they didn’t involve an elected official with a documented history of using his position to get out of traffic violations.
Thirdly, they didn’t lie about it.
I will play devil’s advocate with you. Care to put a handle on your messages so I know its the same person?
1–so like the overmedicated victim we have in this case. No one wants to talk about it, but it is true. If you read he was stumbling just minutes before the accident. So was Joe distracted when he went in the ditch and did not report it?
2–I watched the tapes and I never saw him ask for any special favors. He was asked and/or identified himself which I thought was natural. The officers chose to give him a ticket or not.
3–What did he lie about specifically? See this is where the case falls apart. You start getting into specifics and the Governor’s team can’t have the best of all world. I’ll tackle a few of them. They first say he was so distracted that he did not see Joe. But they can’t say what he was distracted by. But just recklessly saying he was distracted without saying it everyone goes to he was using his phone. The Investigators badgered him that it was his phone. However, the evidence proves that he was not on his phone at the time of the accident and it locked on the east side of Highmore. So the investigators either knew that or were lying to him in the interview….which was it? Of course they thought he was being deceptive as there theory was WRONG. He wouldn’t admit to something he knew he did not do.
OR
You think he was lying about seeing Joe. Tell me at what point he saw Joe. I have listened to the 911 tape many times, it does not sound like he knows what he hit and what did they say it was 16 seconds after he called 911. He knows they hit someone and calls 911 that quick, wouldn’t you take a couple minutes to think of something. Then he repeatedly says in the interview he did not see anyone, so they say will you take a lie detector test? he says YES and even said he would go to North Dakota, but yet they don’t give himone….why because I think the phone data came back and said he wasn’t on the phone and was telling the truth. So much easier to say “we think he is lying” with no proof than to let him pass the lie detector test and then truly have nothing.
Your turn I’m up for the debate as his actions to me always seem reasonable.
Note the irony of Craig Price attacking Jason for identifying himself as the attorney general. It seems like Price can barely make a public statement without boasting that he’s doing so “as a 24-year law enforcement officer.”
Price apparently believes his years of experience give him the power to read Jason’s mind.
I read the story. Koth believes Ravnsborg was distracted by his cell phone. But the investigation revealed Ravnsborg’s phone was locked for 90 seconds before the crash so whatever the distraction was, it wasn’t the phone.
This makes me think Koth wasn’t paying attention to the report of the investigation, so what’s distracting Koth? Why doesn’t he know this, if he has followed the investigation as closely as he claims?
This is on a par with Goodwin declaring that nobody calls 911 after hitting a deer, he’s hit 6 and never called 911 himself. Hey, never mind that any vehicle damage over $1000 has to be reported to law enforcement and it’s a class 2 misdemeanor if you don’t. It’s also a class 2 misdemeanor if a body shop repairs a car that hasn’t been red-tagged.
Our legislators aren’t doing anything but embarrassing themselves with these statements. .
Was it this faulty reasoning which convinced so many of them to vote for impeachment?
What are they smokin’ up there?
So should Goodwin be impeached since he deserves a class 2 misdemeanor for failing to properly report any of the 6 deers he hit? Open for discussion.
“I was originally leaning toward not impeaching, but then what really pushed me to a yes vote was when I received the email from the attorney general late on Monday night.”
–Rep. Lance Koth
I’ve met Lance, and I used to know both his daughter and his dad, and they all seem like basically good people, but that quote suggests disrespect for the rule of law. Nothing in Jason’s email remotely approaches an impeachable offense.
Jason says he looked at the speedometer, and Joe Boever was in the roadway. Watch this video and explain why there couldn’t have been both a collision in the roadway and a collision on the shoulder:
On the day before the crash, Joe Boever had a prescription filled with 90 pills of the psychotropic drug lorazepam, which can cause suicidal ideations. The prescribed dosage was up to three pills per day. There were 12 pills left after the crash.
On the evening of the crash, Boever drove his truck into a bale beside the highway hard enough to force the grille guard back into the grille. Neither he nor the cousin who picked him up reported that crash.
Boever left town on foot after dark, didn’t ask anyone for a ride, declined a ride offered by a passing motorist, and never told anyone why he was out there.
Craig Price says Jason was so distracted by … well, by something … that he happened to be driving inches from the edge of the pavement, with all four wheels outside the rumble strip, at the exact spot where the overdosed Boever was supposedly “walking.”
That would have been quite a coincidence, don’t you think?
Jason says he was in the driving lane, hadn’t set the cruise control yet, looked down at the speedometer, heard a sudden bang, and struggled to see through the shattered windshield and keep the car on the pavement.
For well over a year, South Dakota journalists have reported the account given by Price, who wasn’t there, as the unquestionable truth, and the account given by Jason, who was there, as an unquestionable lie.
Humans are insane.
How do you explain the browsing history on Jason’s phone during the time of the accident? Furthermore, who browses the internet while driving? I understand the temptation to look at a message that just came in, but browsing this website while driving? Come on….
what browsing history? the investigators found the phone was locked for 90 seconds prior to
impact, and he’d had to unlock it to call 911.
I don’t know what kind of phone he had or what the auto-lock feature was set for, but mine is set for five minutes. My phone doesn’t lock unless I have completely stopped using it for five minutes. That includes using a browser. Did Ravnsborg manually lock his phone or did he just stop using it for a set period of time to cause it to auto lock?
Either way, the forensics confirm that Jason wasn’t using the phone at the time of the crash, and the investigators are lying when they suggest he’s a “liar” for not bringing up an unrelated misdemeanor on his own.
Just the facts, mam.
Not rumors, not emotional tirades, not opinions, not heresay.
Just the facts, mam.
USS Montana is a sister to the new USS South Dakota – very cool Pat!
Bob mentioned above the article about comparable accidents so I checked it out. Here it is for everyone.
https://listen.sdpb.org/crime-courts/2022-04-19/ravnsborgs-punishment-charges-similar-to-others-in-comparable-accidents
Moore’s comments were very interesting. The investigators couldn’t say how he was distracted, how long he was outside the lane and that he was NOT texting.
“There is no way they would have investigated a case like this if it wasn’t the attorney general”.
Interesting thread of comments today. The AG’s friends and/or employees appear to be flooding the comment section today. They know that many of the ‘jurors’ read this blog and they are trying to cast doubt on the impeachment.
Time for Ravnsborg to resign.
Yeah people that actually think and look at the facts vs Governors pressure and spin machine…
How foolish of us to look at details….not…well he had to be….or we think he did but can’t prove….
I cant stand the governor, but your naked attempts at deflecting onto her doesnt absolve him.
doesn’t absolve him of what? a couple of misdemeanors?
What is the vote in the senate? 28-7?
A couple of misdemeanors that:
1) is a part of a pattern of misconduct (how many stops and citation for our state’s chief LEO? And he got yet another AFTER the accident?)
2) he lied about them
3) contributed to a man’s death
Ok, now you tell us why should ignore these points in favor of the paragon of virtue, Jason Ravnsborg.
Let’s talk about how many speeding tickets Noem has.
Twenty speeding tickets, three-stop sign violations, two seat belt violations, and a citation for driving with no driver’s license. She has also been issued six court notices for failure to appear and two arrest warrants.
For comparison, Jason has gotten 12 tickets since he was a teenager, and one of them was for an improper exhaust system. As an adult, he’s been cited for speeding nine times, an average of just over once every three years.
How many times was he stopped and not subsequently issued a cite? Notice you left that little inconvenient fact out of your analysis, which makes sense given how many there are. It sure would be nice to not have laws applied to me for a decade.
Fifteen warnings, or approximately one every other year.
12 tickets, 15 warnings. Yeah, what is everyone’s problem not trusting Ravnsborg is a stellar driver who should be trusted here?
In 26 years. Smear job.
Yes, telling people what someone did is smearing that person. What a brilliant statement.
And there it is. When your questions are answered directly, immediately play “what about?”
(Also lacks a corpse, but hey, let’s ignore that!)
Ah, yes. When Jason was coerced to plead no contest to an illegal “lane change” after a human body hit the right side of his car and angled it onto the shoulder.
Ah yes, “coerced.” You supporters are flat out shameless. Much like the AG. You deserve each other.
The judge’s mind was already made up. He excluded Boever’s medical records, denied Jason a jury trial, and initially sought to sentence him to lecture young drivers about the dangers of distracted driving.
great point about the judge –and that is after Kristi destroyed any chance he could get a fair jury trial with her selective release of evidence…..this has been a railroad job since day 1.
The undeniable facts are ever present in this case which only need a 2/3 majority of SD Senate members to agree with. As a sitting SD House member who scrolled through almost all of the data on this case; it became quite damning very quickly. And just an FYI the Governor had zero to do with any perceived consequences of perceptions involving the forensics of this horrific accident and the subsequent coverage and possible coverup.
Please don’t be coy, Charlie. What are the “undeniable” facts and “damning” data? And what’s the evidence that supposedly proves them?
A vote that was essentially 36-34 does not have undeniable facts… there is clearly lots of doubt just based on the discussion here.
The Governor was part of it???
She invaded the AGs privacy with discussion of private texts, selectively released “evidence” multiple times. She criticized the House, she criticized the committee, she authorized the release of the videos during a pending case, she criticized the prosecutors and the judge, she was clearly pressuring members—- ask them—-I have——
Then there were the illegal robocalls with lady saying the Governor was involved when she did not know she was being taped and the illegal billboards one of which attacked Scott Odenbach who was not on the committee— but who knew he assisted the AG with a statement—- the people who had the report— ie DPS and the Governor. Hmmmm Think about that Charlie. You said you would pull your endorsement of the Governor if she was behind billboards— that seems like undeniable evidence to me. Who else has motive and opportunity?
I am sure I missed something about Governor meddling but to say it had nothing to do with Governor is naive—especially when we know the AG turned her in for multiple ethics violations to the Government Accountability Board.
Trying to smear Jason in the media with private text messages taken out of context may have been Craig Price’s most blatantly immoral abuse of power.
Jeez, thanks for taking the time to look at “almost” all the evidence, Chuck. Is that how the level of effort you put in to everything?
I heard only 10 of 70 legislators looked at the whole file….were you one of the 10?
JR should be done.
His political career is over.
His professional career should be too.
The last-minute, typo-ridden letter screamed incompetence and dishonesty.
He had every opportunity to come out, own up to his actions, answer questions, and address concerns. He failed to do so at every opportunity and that’s entirely on him.
The more Jason came out, answered questions, and addressed concerns, the more Craig Price and other Marty Jackley supporters screamed that he was a killer and a liar.
Truth hurts.
When did he come out?
Seriously asking.
He’s removed himself from the public eye and only takes potshots through poorly written press releases.
The man is too chicken to sit down with any reporter, investigator, or legislator who’d press him about his choices since the crash, let alone his actions that night.
And Noem using Robo callers and Billboards to taint the decisions of the house isn’t chicken and garbage as well?
Again, deflecting to Noem. You are losing the arguments.
Again you are missing the point that Noem is driving the entire impeachment, no one else wanted this. It’s all her. So sorry, but you lost the argument.
Bam!!!
Lol. Many people called for his resignation before Noem did. But keep telling yourself she’s the only reason he was impeached.
That is just factually incorrect.
2/3rds of the residents in the state want him gone.
Because politicians and journalists have been lying to them about what happened almost continuously for a year and a half.
The only other person who called for the impeachment was mary Fitzgerald, who is still bitter over her husband losing sounding to Ravnsborg during the last AG convention.
Not true. I called his office and told him to resign also.
And who are you?
How does anyone know you? And why should anyone care?
When?
I’m a constituent, that’s all that matters. He can quit now or be fired by the public later this year. I’d save myself further embarrassment but that’s just me.
I think this whole process sets a dangerous precedent. Any member can now clump multiple articles of impeachment together and introduce it.
I think if this holds up in the senate we will have many more future impeachment.
Careful what you ask for especially when you have at least 2 senators with recent DUI charges.
This is about a precedent and history bigger than any one case.
How many members of the legislator have misdemeanor level 2 tickets, should they not all be impeached at this point?
How many killed a man?
O it’s you again. No one killed anyone, it was ruled an accident. I guess you can’t read and can’t comprehend.
And look, it’s the dummy who conflates criminal liability with being a cause in fact of a death. Nothing to see here!
There’s abundant evidence that the primary “cause in fact” of Boever’s death is that he was in the roadway to commit suicide.
Didn’t Joe’s own family state Joe’s preferred method of suicide was to jump infront of a car?
One cousin said Joe told him that, but regardless of whether the cousin is credible, there’s plenty of other evidence.
Everyone mad at Noem in this thread will vote for her again because of that little (R) next to her name. Have fun!
I didn’t even vote for her the first time.
“… Koth said Ravnsborg’s letter was very well-written …”
I couldn’t come to this conclusion, even if l overlooked the inaccuracies (incorrect date), mispelled words and the obviously incompletely edited copy.
“Jason was not distracted by his phone. It was locked.”
Fiddling with a locked phone while trying to unlock it would certainly be considered a distracting activity.
Since there was record that Ravnsborg used his phone throughout the trip, it is quite concievable that Ravnsborg was trying to unlock his phone at the moment he struck Joe Boever.
There is nothing to back that false assertion
Jason hadn’t had time to set the cruise control, much less unlock his phone, but serious question:
Is it illegal to unlock a phone while driving? Even to make a call?
Maybe more to the point, who swerves ten feet and crosses the rumble strip with all four wheels, but doesn’t notice the vibration because he’s unlocking a phone?
Craig Price’s entire scenario is preposterous. Overdosed Joe Boever hit the right side of Jason’s car and angled it onto the shoulder.
Since we are awaiting round 2 of the “People’s Court”, I’d like to take a different spin. One that maybe relates more to the people of SD instead of the attorney’s and politicians amongst us. Judge Wapner and Doug Llewelyn will play appropriate roles in the upcoming performance. We’ll tune in, and weigh in at the polls.
Perception drives reality. The reality is his car did kill a human that night and perception from most people (I think) is he is not fit for SD’s top law enforcement officer. Not because he killed someone, but the array of information on how it was handled by him, the wall of protection, denial, or whatever plethora of BS that we’ve read on this and the political theater. Period. I could end this post here, but will share one more thought. He would be forgiven much easier by the public if he resigned, stating that what happened that night was unfortunate and something he will live with the rest of his life. That said, it is a distraction to the office he holds, and he will be stepping down. I can respect that. I don’t think there is a person who thinks he did this intentionally. We can all forgive an accident. It feels like a snake in the grass, legally, and politically, and that is what gets the public in array over this.
Deflect deflect deflect! I’d have no issue with the Gov walking out right behind AG but she hasn’t killed anyone (unlike her BFF Corey apparently).
The reality is Noem has skewed everyone’s perception
This couldn’t be much farther from the “People’s Court.” Joe Boever was in the driving lane to commit suicide. Jason hadn’t set the cruise control yet, and he looked down at the speedometer. He didn’t see the body that night, or the extremely dim flashlight, and he didn’t know what he’d hit. He told the truth to the public and to the investigators. The investigators falsely insinuated that he was lying, and Governor Noem illegally published the video of the investigators falsely insinuating that he was lying.
What do you even mean by the “wall of protection” and “denial”? Jason’s account of what happened that night has been on the public record for a long, long time. Do you expect him to say, “No, I’m not,” every time a Marty Jackley supporter screams that he’s a killer and a liar?
I voted for Jason largely because I thought he’d defend liberty and the rule of law and hold corrupt law enforcement officers accountable. This isn’t a “distraction” from his job. This IS his job.
Jesus loves you, Jason. Hang in there.
The funniest perception of them all is you think this has anything to do with the accident——
From day one Noem has Weaponized this whole process in an attempt to get control of the attorney generals office
Take a deep look at all her actions
Especially since the month prior she used her power to get her daughter a license.
One has to wonder what else Noem is hiding???
If Joe was in the middle of the road, how did Jason not see him? Why no attempt to slam on the brakes? The only answer is he was distracted. By what? Does it matter?
Jason hadn’t set the cruise control yet, and he looked down at the speedometer. Looking at the speedometer when transitioning between speed zones is an integral part of driving, not a distraction from driving.
By Craig Price’s own account, Jason may have had less than 0.6 seconds to see Boever.
Jason probably made no attempt to “slam” on the brakes because whatever he’d hit was already behind him.
Any person could miss anything if only having .6 seconds to see.