The South Dakota House special committee examining whether Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg should be impeached for his conduct after killing a pedestrian in 2020 says it will release its final report by the end of the month.
The 7 Republicans and 2 Democrats met behind closed doors for nearly 2 hours late Thursday, then said they would meet again in 2 weeks on the 28th to discuss whether to recommend Ravnsborg be impeached.
The final report will include the crash investigation with some parts redacted and will be released to House lawmakers and the public.
The committee’s decision may be complicated by the letter it received this week from Secretary of Public Safety Craig Price calling for impeachment and releasing new allegations about the attorney general..
Price, who also released the full letter to the public, says between taking office in January 2019 and the fatal accident in Sept 2020, Ravnsborg had been pulled over for traffic offenses – mostly speeding – 8 times and was never ticketed. He was ticketed 8 times from 2014-19, including 5 for speeding.
House Speaker and committee head Spencer Gosch blasted the letter on Wed as an intrusion on the panel’s deliberations orchestrated by Gov Kristi Noem, who has pushed for impeachment for over a year.
Yesterday, Gosch said the committee wrote directly to Noem, telling her not to release any more information about the crash investigation. Gosch said what Noem is doing is “inappropriate,” especially since they’ve asked her “numerous times” to stop.
Gosch also says the allegations and information in Price’s letter are irrelevant to the crash and that “trying to influence the public in an opinion and events that aren’t even surrounding what we’re trying to do is inappropriate.”
THe speaker added that the committee is going to have to make a difficult decision one way or the other and are going to ultimately make some people angry and some people not.