Scott Ziegler, the superintendent of Loudoun County, Virginia’s schools who was fired after concealing a rape and criminally convicted of retaliating against a teacher who was cooperating with the grand jury looking into the coverup, appeared in court on Thursday expecting to be sentenced—but had his sentencing postponed after asking a judge to overturn the jury’s verdict on a technicality.
Materials submitted by his attorney indicated no remorse or acceptance of responsibility, without which defendants are typically given harsher sentences. Instead, he submitted letters brimming with partisan rage that seemed to blame Republicans for the coverup.
Ziegler was convicted in September of violating the State and Local Government Conflicts of Interest Act, a misdemeanor that could carry up to a year in jail. In a post-conviction motion to set aside the verdict, Ziegler claimed he did not know he was not allowed to retaliate, and only “knowing” violations of the Act are a crime.
His lawyer, Erin Harrigan, never argued that at trial, and said she noticed the language after re-reading the law after his conviction.
Prosecutors shot back that the last-ditch effort was too little, too late, and provided evidence showing that Harrigan consented to the jury instructions relied upon to reach the verdict.
They also said he knew it was illegal to use his position to retaliate for numerous reasons, including that he is on video participating in a school board meeting that went over the ethics act.
Harrigan’s attorney previously argued he could only be prosecuted for violating the Act by the “local” Commonwealth’s Attorney—at the time a Democrat—but not a special prosecutor for the attorney general, who is a Republican.
In a letter to the judge in an attempt to influence his sentence, his wife, Lisa Ziegler, lashed out in partisan tones, saying Ziegler’s “name and reputation have been dragged through the mud for political gain. Politicians, interlopers, and outsiders have accused him of using his position for political gain.” She said her husband was not part of the “leftest [sic] global cabal,” and quoted at length from Joe Biden.
She blamed Gov. Glenn Youngkin–not the conduct for which a local jury convicted Ziegler, or the false statement about the rape caught on video—for his plight, saying, “[O]ur family has been rocked to the core so an ambitious billionaire could gain some electoral points in Northern Virginia.”
In another letter, a top Loudoun County Public Schools official defended him, making it difficult for LCPS to argue that with Ziegler fired, it has corrected its problems. (Indeed, LCPS has continued to seemingly try to cover up its coverups by refusing Freedom of Information Act requests.)
“Dr. Ziegler took great care to ensure that his decisions and actions were not only in line with School Board policies and the Code of Virginia but also aligned with a broader sense of ethical responsibility,” LCPS Chief Human Resources Officer Lisa Boland wrote.
Another LCPS employee, executive assistant Michelle Walker, seemed to blame Republicans for Ziegler covering up a rape to pass a transgender policy. She alleged a conspiracy theory in which a “coordinated, nationwide political strategy” was “executed at [his] door” to “turn the tide of public opinion.”
The Daily Wire’s Virginia-based education reporter broke the story cited by the grand jury in the course of covering other issues in the district, and ran the story in October 2021 not because there was an election the next month, but rather because the rapist Ziegler let remain in school had just struck again.
Ziegler seemed to throw school board members under the bus in a bid for a lenient sentence, presenting letters of praise from school board members after they knew of the rape coverup, but before he was fired. One praised him for being a “lightning rod” that took criticism on their behalf.
The school board was aware of Ziegler’s actions because of an internal law firm investigation they commissioned and kept secret, but they only fired him when similar evidence became known to the public thanks to a report from a grand jury.
You have “served us by serving as a lighting for in order to defect [sic] partisan attacks,” then-board member Tom Marshall wrote to Ziegler in a letter.
Vice-chair Ian Serotkin complained of “unrelenting and unfair national scrutiny” and the “way you have been demonized.”
School board chair Jeff Morse wrote that he suffered “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and the “board support you.”
On Thursday, prosecutor Brandon Wrobleski told the judge that “He knew he couldn’t do a retaliatory firing.” He reminded the judge that at trial, school board member John Beatty testified under oath that Ziegler told board members he was firing teacher Erin Brooks for cooperating with the grand jury investigating sexual assaults, and because he (falsely) believed Brooks had spoken to a conservative activist.
Wrobleski said during the board meeting where Ziegler used a parliamentary maneuver to quietly end Brooks’ contract, another board member, Denise Corbo, asked him about it, only to be met with a strange reaction. “Jeff Morse shut Corbo up,” Wrobleski said.
Whereas Beatty had a clear memory of what happened, Morse “testified on Ziegler’s behalf and said he couldn’t remember anything,” Wrobleski said Thursday. Another Democrat board member invoked attorney-client privilege to refuse to say what had happened, and Ziegler did not testify on his own behalf.
After hearing the arguments Thursday, Judge Douglas Fleming postponed the sentencing so that he could consider Ziegler’s motion to overturn the jury’s verdict.