Viewing the killing of a police officer as a political opportunity is beneath contempt.
That’s what a GOP insider had to say about Kelly Ayotte’s politicization of a murdered police officer.
Ayotte likes to say she’s a prosecutor, not a politician. But, as we learned this week, that’s just not the case. Kelly Ayotte is a politician through and through and her own emails prove it. In fact, it looks like that some major decisions she made as Attorney General--including her prosecution of the murderer of Manchester Police Officer Michael Briggs--were made with an eye toward a future Kelly Ayotte political campaign.
Laura Clawson wrote a great post covering this story--if you haven’t already, take a moment to read her piece.
The bottom line is that Kelly Ayotte was making political calculations just days after a police officer was tragically murdered, and her political plotting continued throughout her prosecution of that case. The politicization of the solemn decision to put a man to death is absolutely unconscionable. The prosecution of that case should have been based solely on the law, not on Kelly Ayotte’s political ambitions.
The news of Ayotte’s cold, calculating political machinations has led to a firestorm up here in New Hampshire. Just yesterday, a group of former NH prosecutors--including a number of Assistant Attorneys General and United States Attorneys--sent a public letter condemning Ayotte’s calculations.
Here’s an excerpt from their letter:
The fact that her analysis of a death penalty decision included the impact that it would have on her political future is a violation of New Hampshire's proud tradition where the Office of the Attorney General is not the place for political dialogue.
The fact that she turned to political operatives such as Mr. Varsalone as a sounding board during her time as Attorney General underscores this point. In Ms. Ayotte's response to Mr Varsalone, she stated nothing of the facts of the case, the proper application of the death penalty, the loss of an officer or the suffering of the family that he left behind. Instead, she responded to his description of a political opportunity by pointing immediately to the fact that her death penalty decision would be a hallmark of her political career
Kelly Ayotte's own emails and own words have betrayed her constant claims that she's not a politician. As Attorney General, she turned an absolute tragedy into political fodder and plotted, for years, to use that tragedy as the basis for a political campaign.
Four years later, her campaign for Senate has run three TV ads on that very tragedy.