Suit faults Rutledge interventions

AG pursuing political ends, not representing state, group’s filing claims

Attorney General Leslie Rutledge has no legal justification, beyond her own political interests, to intervene in out-of-state lawsuits involving the presidential election and the National Rifle Association, a group of detractors who are suing her claim in recent filings.

Members of the eight-member taxpayer group, who have banded together to sue Rutledge, a Republican contender for governor, accuse her of using her office to further her own interests, including spending state funds to promote her candidacy.

Rutledge is the first woman and first Republican elected attorney general, and her lawyers say the lawsuit is composed of baseless claims made by her political opponents and that everything she has done since taking office in 2015 has been to promote the interests of Arkansas and its residents. Her critics just don’t like the way she’s gone about it, her lawyers assert, calling on the presiding judge, Alice Gray, to dismiss the 6-week-old suit.

In the response to that dismissal motion, filed Wednesday, the group’s attorney Richard Mays states that Rutledge’s lawyers ignore evidence and the law to argue the suit should be thrown out.

Mays says Rutledge’s decision to join Arkansas to lawsuits before the U.S. Supreme Court involving the results of the Pennsylvania presidential election and an effort to delay the Electoral College vote to certify the national presidential results are clearly outside the scope of her duties.

Those suits are both missing something that Arkansas law requires before the attorney general can get involved — a state officer, board or commission to be directly involved, Mays’ response states.

All Rutledge was doing in those lawsuits — both of which were rejected by the high court — was representing herself when she joined her Republican peers in the litigation, according to the pleading.

“There is no conceivable ‘interest of the State of Arkansas’ to be found in these actions,” the filing states. “To the contrary, they were taken solely for the purpose, not of protecting against election fraud, but of interfering with the Nation’s election processes and perpetuating what, if successful, would have been the biggest election fraud in history. To understate it, not only were such actions not in the interest of the state, they were contrary to the interest of the state and the United States of America as well, and were a breach of Rutledge’s solemn oath of office to ‘support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Arkansas.’”

The pleading also takes aim at Rutledge’s decision to oppose efforts by New York state regulators to dissolve the gun-rights group’s corporate charter because of evidence the NRA’s leadership was misusing funds.

“Again, there is no interest of the State of Arkansas involved in New York’s efforts to monitor and terminate abuse by the management of non-profit organizations, such as the NRA, New York’s suit seeks to stop and punish alleged corruption in the management of corporations authorized by the state,” the filing states. “Defendant Rutledge … intervened on behalf of the organization accused of the corruption and misappropriation of funds, and now attempts to justify such intervention by characterizing the interest of the State of Arkansas as being to protect freedom of speech and right of association of the members of the NRA — the very people whose dues and contributions were a part of the funds allegedly being mismanaged by NRA management.”