U.S. Attorneys Scandal—Minneapolis

By Scott Horton

As noted previously, after Minneapolis U.S. attorney Tom Heffelfinger was purged, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling installed their good friend, 33-year old Rachel Paulose, in his place. Paulose’s intemperate conduct immediately produced a meltdown in the Minneapolis office, including the resignation of the four senior officers who ran the office. Paulose and her friends at main Justice set out to defend her by arguing that those who stepped down were spoilsports who had problems working with a young woman of color. The New York Times was suckered into this reporting in an embarrassing way. I deconstructed the egregious story that the Times ran here.

Yesterday the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the four senior AUSAs had sent a letter to Paulose questioning her public statements and demanding that she retract them. It appears that Paulose spoke with a Minneapolis gossip columnist about the matter and that “unnamed sources” at Justice had been deployed to support her account.

The letter of the four AUSAs is reproduced here.