It is alarming that the chief prosecutor in this state, Alabama Attorney General Troy King can’t fully see his serious error in judgment.When confronted with the fact that he asked ousted two-year college Chancellor Roy Johnson for a favor while his office was investigating the system, King was less than forthcoming in calling it what it was — highly inappropriate.
He did say if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t have asked Johnson to hire the mother of one of his employees while he was investigating allegations of nepotism and misuse of funds during the fired chancellor’s tenure.
It was inappropriate enough for King to ask St. Clair County District Attorney Richard Minor to oversee the AG’s continuing investigation into corruption involving Johnson and the two-year college system. But he isn’t classifying it inappropriate enough to keep him out of the entire investigation, only where it applies to Johnson.
He said he doesn’t see why he cannot continue to investigate parts of the case when it does not apply to Johnson. Apart from its being a confusing mess if he is in and out of an investigation, it shows his true lack of understanding of the implications of this probe.
King just doesn’t get it. He asked for the same kind of favor being alleged throughout this investigation — that family and friends, friends of friends, lawmakers and friends and family of lawmakers were handed lucrative jobs and contracts.
To remove himself from one part of that investigation but stay in it in the rest is nothing but a failure to see the big picture here. And reducing it to his justification to a Birmingham reporter as, “It’s unfortunate that in Montgomery, no good deed goes unpunished,” is tantamount to dismissing the furor over his own role as politics.
Failing to see the full extent of the inappropriateness of his action after the fact is as bad, if not worse than his failure to see it beforehand.
