Todd Gilbert resigned his post as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia on Wednesday, apparently after being told by higher-ups in the Trump administration that his nomination was going to be pulled from consideration by the U.S. Senate, following a failed loyalty test.
This all went down just five weeks after Gilbert, a former Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, most recently the Republican Minority Leader, and a state delegate from Woodstock, 70 miles north of our home base in Waynesboro, had been sworn in as the interim U.S. Attorney.
ICYMI
I failed to mention in all of that – Gilbert, who also resigned his 33rd House District seat and dropped out of his re-election race to take the U.S. Attorney job – is a reliable MAGA, or at least he was.
Who knows, now maybe he joins Liz Cheney and Larry Sabato at UVA.
His only comment to this point on the machinations that led to his ouster has been a meme posted to his Twitter account.
The meme is Ron Burgundy, of “Anchorman” fame, from the scene after the back-alley fight of the TV news crews, that has Burgundy, as portrayed by actor Will Farrell, saying, “Boy, that escalated quickly.”
Virginia Scope has the scoop, reporting Thursday that Gilbert, who had yet to be confirmed by the Senate, was told that the White House wanted him to fire somebody in his office who had worked under the Biden administration and replace that person with Robert Tracci, the runner-up for the Western District appointment.
Tracci is also a former one-term Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney who lost his re-election bid in 2019, then got himself another paid government job with Rusty McGuire, the Commonwealth’s attorney in Louisa County and brother of Trump-endorsed MAGA Congressman John McGuire, before moving on up to a job with the Office of Attorney General under MAGA Republican Jason Miyares.
Gilbert, per the Virginia Scope report, initially resisted hiring Tracci, before relenting – but with the initial resistance to the orders from on high, the die had been cast.
The telling line from the Scope report: “the only thing that is accepted is blind loyalty.”
The thing with “blind loyalty” here is, it’s not like “abortion is a lifestyle convenience” Todd Gilbert is a Never Trumper, or anything close.
The guy repeatedly blocked an effort to remove the outdated ban on gay marriage from the Virginia Constitution, just because.
His intern tried to infiltrate a Virginia group working to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, which he happens to vehemently oppose.
Let’s see, what else.
Gilbert opposed Obamacare and Medicaid expansion at the state level in Virginia.
He routinely denigrated those who want justice for Palestinians caught between militants in Hamas and militants in the Israeli military as advocating for the “rape, murder and kidnapping of innocent people.”
It’s hard to imagine Todd Gilbert joining The Resistence, is what I’m getting at.
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Chris Graham
