Youngkin, Earle-Sears using Virginia State Police to do campaign business

Glenn Youngkin is using the Virginia State Police to try to create a campaign issue for his lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, using the reliable MAGA hot-button topics of abortion and liberals doing bad things in schools.

All you really need to know from the press releases from the offices of Gov. Youngkin and Lt. Gov. Earle-Sears is that Youngkin has directed the Virginia State Police to open a criminal investigation.

This is your first clue that whatever follows is inherently political.

You only announce that you’re doing an investigation if you’re trying to get headlines.

I’ve been reporting on local and state issues for 30 years, and it never fails that I can’t get anybody in law enforcement to ever just confirm that they’re doing an investigation when I know that they are.

So, we know here that Youngkin has directed the State Police to do an investigation, and we of course know why, because that’s the whole point of this exercise.

From the Youngkin taxpayer-funded press release: “allegations of school-funded abortions in Fairfax County.”

Oh, dear.

The release then tells us that “the investigation comes after a report published detailed allegations of school staff members allegedly facilitating minors to get abortions without parental consent.”

Everything I’ve seen from news outlets in Virginia has parroted this line, without showing that whoever is responsible for pushing the button to publish the press release has looked up where the report originated.

Would it matter that the report comes from something called W.C. Dispatch, “a conservative platform delivering sharp political commentary and investigative journalism,” according to the site’s About page, led by the one-man team of Walter Curt, whose Twitter bio tells us is the state director of something called The Conservative Caucus.

If the name Walter Curt is familiar, there is another Walter Curt, a Rockingham County businessman who was appointed by Youngkin to serve on the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

I only bring up the name coincidence because anybody who knows anything about Virginia politics would say, hey, wait a minute.

I can’t seem to find any bio information for either that would suggest the two Curts are connected here.

The reporting by the journalist Walter Curt borders on the fantastic – written to make it sound like a social worker basically forced the girls into scheduling appointments for abortions, that a school principal knew, and that taxpayer dollars were used to pay the bills.

That the details reported included Curt naming as the clinic where the abortions were allegedly scheduled a location that does not exist is among the issues here, though, trying to be fair to Mr. Curt here, his writing here and on other posts on his blog is tortured, so maybe he has the basic facts right, and the reporting is just rough around the edges.

The issue isn’t a guy who comes across as a dirty-tricks, fake-news politico masquerading as a journalist doing what people who like that kind of thing will like; it’s the governor going public with a breaking-news announcement that he’s ordered a full-scale investigation based on what is, at best, a kernel of something that may or may not be true.

Earle-Sears is behind big-time in the polls, and it’s clear what Youngkin is trying to do here: give her something to work with.

The evidence of that: her office – not her campaign, but her taxpayer-funded office – put out a statement shortly after the governor’s office put out its statement.

“The allegations that Fairfax County Public Schools provided minors with access to abortion services without any parental knowledge or consent is abhorrent,” Lt. Gov. Earle-Sears said, and I would tend to agree, the allegations “is” abhorrent.

Do they have editors there on that side?

“At Gov. Youngkin’s direction, the Virginia State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation has initiated a criminal investigation into these troubling reports. Our administration looks forward to the results of this investigation and will take the appropriate action to ensure the safety of all students,” Earle-Sears said.

I doubt seriously that we’ll ever hear of this again.