Scott Ziegler, the superintendent of Loudoun County, Virginia&#8217;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 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jury-finds-former-loudoun-county-superintendent-guilty-of-charges-stemming-from-trans-rape-coverup">convicted in September</a> 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 &#8220;knowing&#8221; 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&#8217;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&#8211;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 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-sues-loudoun-schools-for-misusing-privacy-protections-to-hide-wrongdoing" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cover up its coverups</a> 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 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says">broke the story</a> 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&#8217; 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.

Scott Ziegler outside the Loudoun courthouse on September 28, 2023 / Daily Wire

As Loudoun Superintendent Heads To Criminal Sentencing, No Evidence Of Remorse, Just Partisan Rage

Education

Loudoun County

Sexual Assault

Transgender

Virginia

The Daily Wire on Tuesday sued the Virginia school system at the center of a rape coverup, stating that Loudoun County Public Schools is violating public records laws by refusing the news outlet’s requests for documentation on legal settlements.
Loudoun, like other school districts throughout the country, has abused “privacy” laws to refuse to turn over basic information under the guise of protecting children’s identities, even if children’s identities would not be exposed. The reference to inapplicable privacy laws suggests the school district&#8217;s real purpose may be to hide embarrassing conduct by administrators.
The Daily Wire’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request asked for a list of legal settlements by LCPS. That essentially amounts to a list of times the school district did something it could have been sued for, and how much taxpayer money it spent to make it go away. Out-of-court settlements allow the district to avoid a public trial, and settlements can require the other party to agree to certain terms — perhaps even a stipulation preventing them from talking about the school’s misconduct — in exchange for the money.
On October 2, 2023 The Daily Wire requested &#8220;copies of all legal settlements entered into between May 1, 2023 and the present,&#8221; specifying that it was “not seeking the name of the student or the parents, and you should redact those names.”
LCPS first claimed the request was too broad  – suggesting it had entered into so many settlements that it would be burdensome to produce them. Then it claimed that “even if the student’s name is removed,” settlements would still be a private academic record “given that the requestor (or others) could discern the identity” of a student involved.
The Daily Wire then requested just a financial ledger showing the dollar amounts spent on legal settlements. LCPS claimed, without explanation, that it had “no records that are responsive to your request,” suggesting the unlikely situation that the school system does not keep financial records.
The Daily Wire “filed a valid FOIA request seeking information on the amount of money the School Board and Administration has spent to cover-up and avoid responsibility for their actions,” the <a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/01/2024.01.16_LCPS-FOIA-Complaint_As-Filed.pdf">lawsuit filed by America First Legal</a> said.
“The documents requested are of the type that can be released, and are released by other school districts in the Commonwealth,”  the lawyers write in the lawsuit, referencing <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/school-district-pays-600k-to-settle-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-after-scotus-declines-to-hear-argument-that-could-give-schools-one-free-rape">records disclosed</a> by nearby Fairfax County Public Schools. “The Respondents have not given a proper justification for withholding the requested documents and, instead, have given only shifting, improper, and pretextual reasons for withholding documents it should have simply produced.”
School officials have frequently invoked the federal “Family Educational Right and Privacy Act of 1974,” known as FERPA, to justify secrecy – even if they don’t understand what the law actually says. In the criminal trial of Loudoun’s former superintendent, Scott Ziegler, a principal claimed that a teacher who blew the whistle about being sexually assaulted by a student could have caused the district to be sued for violating privacy, even though the teacher didn’t name the student or even the school.
But FERPA provides no “cause of action” or mechanism to sue. Only the Secretary of Education can enforce the law, theoretically with a loss of federal funding — a drastic step that experts consulted by The Daily Wire could not recall any examples of.
On the other hand, districts can be sued for keeping information secret. This is the second case in a month in which the public-interest legal group <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-sues-biden-doj-for-concealing-records-on-its-partisan-riot-squad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">America First Legal is suing</a> on behalf of The Daily Wire’s investigative journalists.
The lawsuit could also send a message to Loudoun about using the same wrongful interpretation of privacy laws in other instances.
This year, LCPS’s new superintendent, Aaron Spence, was accused of <a href="https://www.loudountimes.com/opinion/our-view-spences-failure-to-communicate-risked-deadly-consequences/article_164eb87e-8fb2-11ee-81b3-8b8d3b353d2a.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">concealing the fact that there were nine fentanyl overdoses</a> in one high school in a single month. Spence denied the charge, claiming his ability to disclose the spike was constrained by privacy laws, even though naming an entire high school does not identify a specific child.
<a href="https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-A/part-99/subpart-D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FERPA</a> only applies to “education records,” and says schools “may release the records or information without the consent required by [the statute] after the removal of all personally identifiable information provided that the educational agency or institution or other party has made a reasonable determination that a student&#8217;s identity is not personally identifiable.”
It also allows for releasing information “in connection with an emergency if knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals.”
Following The Daily Wire’s exposure of Loudoun’s 2021 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">coverup</a> of a rape committed by a skirt-wearing boy, LCPS commissioned an “independent report,” then withheld it citing the privacy of the victim — even when the victim’s family asked for it. LCPS also cited privacy as an excuse to avoid telling parents that the infamous rape had occurred at all, instead telling them the police were at the school for because of an unruly parent—the victim’s father.
LCPS spent at least $1.9 million on lawyers since the 2021 rape scandal, not including the criminal defense fees for Ziegler and the school’s spokesman, and any money it spent paying off potential litigants.
“Over a year ago, a special grand jury in Loudoun County explicitly stated that Loudoun County Public Schools relies on overbroad application of laws to ‘impede transparency, accountability, and openness,’” America First Legal senior advisor Ian Prior said. “Even after LCPS’s former superintendent was criminally indicted and convicted as a result of the special grand jury investigation, LCPS continues to stonewall the public when it comes to legitimate requests for how taxpayer money is being used.”
In addition to asking a judge to force LCPS to release the document, it asks that the court issue “penalties” to LCPS communications officer Dan Adams “and any other Respondent this Court finds substantively involved in the decision to unlawfully withhold documents.”
Across the country, other districts have made dubious claims that telling parents important things that happened at a school would violate the privacy of a child, even if the child wasn’t named.
In Giles County, Tennessee, superintendent Vickie Beard concealed from parents the fact that a student was arrested for allegedly making <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessee-school-put-would-be-shooter-in-class-told-parents-to-become-left-wing-activists-if-they-objected-parents-say" target="_blank" rel="noopener">detailed plans to shoot up the school</a>. Beard told them only of an unspecified “rumor,” later saying that “due to Constitutional and privacy rights, we cannot discuss specifics.”
Parents said the idea that the district was concerned that the alleged would-be school shooter would sue the school for invading his privacy is not credible. The real goal, they said, was to keep parents in the dark about a safety failure.
Hannah Riley, whose son testified against the arrested student and was never told that he was coming back to school, pointed out that everyone in a school is a minor, meaning that if officials could invoke “privacy” any time an incident in any way connected to an unnamed minor, they would never have to tell parents anything.
“My kid is a minor. Why did nobody give a damn then?” Riley said.

Loudoun County Courthouse

Daily Wire Sues Loudoun Schools For Misusing Privacy Protections To Hide Wrongdoing

The Daily Wire

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration has dropped the criminal case against former Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler for lying about the now-infamous bathroom rape, The Daily Wire has learned. 
Ziegler was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jury-finds-former-loudoun-county-superintendent-guilty-of-charges-stemming-from-trans-rape-coverup" target="_blank" rel="noopener">convicted</a> in September in a separate trial for retaliating against a teacher who cooperated with the special grand jury convened to investigate the rape coverup. He faces sentencing for that misdemeanor conviction on January 11. He was acquitted of a second charge in that trial.
But the third misdemeanor charge — for the lie at the core of the Daily Wire’s October 2021 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bombshell</a> — was separated out into a trial slated for March.
Prosecutors working for Attorney General Jason Miyares <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24235038-motion_to_np" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed</a> a “motion for nolle prosequi” on Wednesday that reminds the court that “Defendant Ziegler is charged with falsely publishing, during a livestreamed meeting of the Loudoun County School Board on June 22, 2021, his following statement: &#8216;To my knowledge we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our bathrooms.’”
Just three weeks prior, a boy wearing a skirt had brutally raped a ninth-grade girl in a girl’s bathroom, and Ziegler was well aware of this fact. The false statement came as the school board was attempting to pass a new policy that would allow transgender-identifying  boys to use the girls bathrooms. Ziegler had a motive to lie because it came as he attempted to dismiss parental concerns about the safety implications, saying they were motivated by unfounded bigotry. 
With Ziegler having concealed the rape from the public, the school board ultimately passed the policy, and the rapist remained in the school, where he went on to sexually assault a second victim. The rapist has since been convicted of both offenses.
In explaining why they were dropping the lying charge, prosecutors suggested that they were satisfied that Ziegler has already been convicted of a crime, and didn’t want to put the county through another expensive trial for the third charge, which was a more minor class 3 misdemeanor carrying only a $500 fine.
The law Ziegler was accused of breaking by lying at a school board meeting was an unusual one: a rarely-used statute that made it a misdemeanor crime to tell a lie that was intended for publication.
“The defendant has been tried and convicted by a jury of his peers for an unrelated act of retaliation against an LCPS special education teacher, for which he faces a maximum punishment of 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine, as well as other collateral consequences,&#8221; the prosecutors wrote. &#8220;The trial of that case lasted 5 days and required the summoning of numerous jurors and witnesses. LCPS spent additional taxpayer funds providing attorneys to many witnesses.”
The special grand jury also wrote a devastating report that advanced justice by illuminating the facts to the public, it said. The school board fired Ziegler as soon as the report was released.
“The Commonwealth is satisfied that justice has been done in the Defendant’s cases, and that nolle prosequi is appropriate under these circumstances,” prosecutors wrote. 
LCPS omitted the rape from <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-loudoun-schools-did-not-record-multiple-alleged-sexual-assaults-over-a-period-of-years-despite-state-law-records-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mandatory disclosures</a> to the state, further evidence that it intended to conceal it.
At a press conference to minimize the fallout, Ziegler appeared to lie again while attempting to explain away the initial false statement. He said that he thought that the question he was asked referred only to transgender sexual assaults—but for one, emails showed that his own administration believed the boy wearing a skirt fit that definition, and immediately became concerned by how the rape could affect its ability to pass the policy. Second, a follow-up question by the school board member made clear that her question included any kind of sexual assaults, but he did not change his answer at the time.
Since his firing, Ziegler has appeared in court wearing nail polish and earrings.
School spokesman Wayde Byard was acquitted of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-schools-honchos-in-perjury-trial-testify-they-cant-remember-almost-anything-about-rape-scandal" target="_blank" rel="noopener">felony perjury</a> over his role in the rape coverup, and the dropped charge means that the criminal fallout of the rape coverup ends with Ziegler’s conviction on a more serious charge rather than a possible acquittal on a less serious one.
The rape victim is suing LCPS under Title IX in federal court, and could stand to win a large amount of money because LCPS’ own lawyers acknowledged in an internal report that LCPS made <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-said-trumps-policies-forced-them-to-cover-up-rape-its-own-lawyers-found-the-opposite-in-secret-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">egregious lapses</a>. LCPS tried to conceal the report, but it was made public as a result of the prosecutors’ actions.
Youngkin and Miyares convened a special grand jury to investigate the rape coverup, and after it laid out its findings, Loudoun voters chose to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/prosecutor-who-tried-to-jail-loudoun-dad-wiped-out-at-the-ballot-box" target="_blank" rel="noopener">boot</a> the county&#8217;s prosecutor and the two school board members who ran for reelection from their offices.

Virginia Drops Remaining Criminal Charge Against Loudoun Superintendent Who Lied About Rape

Voters have opted to kick to the curb the most over-the-top villain of the Loudoun County, Virginia, transgender rape coverup — a prosecutor who won her position backed by an absurd sum of George Soros cash, then tried to jail the father of the rape victim despite running on a platform of leniency.
Commonwealth&#8217;s Attorney Buta Biberaj, the &#8220;progressive&#8221; prosecutor who openly boasted that she would simply decline to enforce laws if they didn&#8217;t mesh with her personal politics, lost narrowly to Bob Anderson, a Republican who previously held the position from 1996 to 2003.
Her political corpse, and those of every school board member who was in office during the 2021 scandal, joins that of former Superintendent Scott Zeigler, who was convicted of a crime for his role in the rape coverup this fall.
All of the nine school board seats were on the ballot, but only two incumbents bothered to run for re-election after the school system drew national disgrace. Both of those incumbents — both Democrats — were defeated on Tuesday, seeming to reflect a view that even in an environment that otherwise favored Democrats in Virginia and, those who sacrificed the safety and education of children for political reasons could not remain in power.
Biberaj refused to concede the race on Tuesday night, though she was down by more than 1,000 votes with essentially all votes counted.
An attorney from the Bronx, Biberaj ran for prosecutor in 2019 in the semi-rural Virginia county, fueled almost entirely by $800,000 from the liberal billionaire George Soros — a massive sum of money in a race where typical spending is typically more like $150,000. Even with an almost absurd amount of outside cash, she won by less than one percent, leading critics to say the seat was bought by the New York billionaire.
Her constant talk of partisan politics, and clear hatred of Republicans who she unfailingly demonized as &#8220;extremists,&#8221; was shocking considering that it was up to her whether someone went to prison — or didn&#8217;t.
Biberaj, alongside then-school board member Beth Barts, was a member of the &#8220;Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County,&#8221; a secret Facebook group whose members plotted to dox, hack, and destroy the livelihoods of any parent who questioned school COVID closures or critical race theory in schools.
Barts&#8217; involvement in the group led to a successful recall petition, which under Virginia law means the prosecutor is supposed to argue to a judge that the official should be removed. Biberaj did not agree to recuse even though she had a clear conflict of interest, and instead seemed to want to throw the case.
In May 2021, a boy wearing a skirt raped a 15-year-old girl in a high school bathroom. Weeks later, Barts and other Democrats were looking to pass a policy allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of the opposite sex. As parents expressed concern about the safety implications, Barts asked whether there had ever been any sexual assaults in the bathroom, and the superintendent said no, because the concerns were based on bigotry.
Scott Smith, the father of the rape victim, was at the school board meeting. A member of the Anti-Racist Parents then came up to Smith and said she didn&#8217;t believe his daughter, and pledged to harm his plumbing business using social media — just as the Facebook group had plotted to do. Smith called her a &#8220;b**ch,&#8221; and was charged with disorderly conduct and, after struggling with the arresting officer, resisting arrest.
Biberaj personally prosecuted Smith — rather than delegating it to one of her trial attorneys, as is typical for nearly all cases, or dropping it, as she would typically do for other minor crimes. Biberaj ran on a platform of decarceration that painted jails as racist and favored alternatives like &#8220;restorative justice&#8221; over punitive punishments — but for the father of a rape victim who represented an inconvenient narrative for Democrat priorities, she sought a jail term, which was unheard of for disorderly conduct charges.
Smith was convicted by a judge. He later appealed and a judge threw out the resisting arrest charge, meaning the only remaining charge was &#8220;disorderly conduct&#8221; for cursing. Gov. Glenn Youngkin granted him a pardon, leading Biberaj to openly stew that she couldn&#8217;t put someone in jail for cursing. Late at night, she repeatedly posted on social media bizarre screeds about Smith, saying &#8220;Karma will not ever be your friend&#8221; and &#8220;[Smith&#8217;s Twitter handle] you are constantly showing your lack of humanity.&#8221;
When it came to the rapist — as opposed to his victim&#8217;s father — Biberaj released him from juvenile detention, allowing him to sexually assault another girl. He was ultimately convicted of both assaults, but due to an error by Biberaj, he was never placed on the sex offenders registry.
Sean Kennedy of Virginians for Safe Communities, which has called attention to the politicization of the role of chief law enforcement officer, told The Daily Wire that the result shows that &#8220;voters woke up.&#8221;
“Standing up for victims and law enforcement is not a partisan or ideological issue,&#8221; Kennedy said. &#8220;After a four year nightmare, Loudoun County voters woke up to the nightmarish reality of these (un)prosecutors and booted Buta Biberaj. Good riddance.”
Among school board races in Loudoun, Democrat Harris Mahedavi, who was on the school board during the rape coverup, lost narrowly to Republican Deana Griffiths.
After The Daily Wire&#8217;s October 2021 expose of the rape coverup, Barts resigned, and was replaced by Democrat Erika Ogedegbe, who went on to vote to <a href="https://www.loudounnow.com/news/education/leesburg-school-board-member-defends-decision-to-withhold-sexual-assault-report/article_c2a3461a-e5ff-11ed-ad0b-9f8cf5d71be1.html">conceal</a> from the public the &#8220;independent&#8221; report that the board commissioned on the rape coverup, which confirmed massive Title IX violations by the district.
On Tuesday, Ogedegbe lost to the Republicans&#8217; preferred candidate Lauren Shernoff, who ran on a platform of getting ideology out of schools.

Buta Biberaj, the Democratic Loudoun County commonwealth’s attorney.

Prosecutor Who Tried To Jail Loudoun Dad Wiped Out At The Ballot Box

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. — A jury of six women and one man on Friday found ex-Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler guilty of using his position to retaliate against a teacher for cooperating with a grand jury investigating how the district handled sexual assault.
After a four-day trial plus a day of deliberations, the jury found that Ziegler wrongfully fired a teacher who had disclosed to Virginia investigators about mishandling of sexual assault in her classroom. Ziegler was convicted of using his official position to retaliate against someone for exercising their rights, and acquitted of punishing someone for testifying to a jury, both misdemeanors.
Ziegler could face up to 12 months in jail, a $2,500 fine, or both. Sentencing in the trial will occur on January 4, 2024, Judge Douglas Fleming Jr. said. Ziegler&#8217;s victim, former special education teacher Erin Brooks, clasped her hands in front of her mouth in emotion after the verdict was read.
Prosecutors appointed by Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, said that after they began investigating the school district&#8217;s coverup of a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">bathroom rape</a>, they spoke with Brooks, who disclosed an unrelated instance of mishandling of sexual assault by school administrators. Brooks was then fired by Ziegler for cooperating with the special grand jury.
Out of all of LCPS&#8217; 15,000 teachers, Brooks was singled out for firing by Ziegler at a school board meeting in June 2022, prosecutors said. Ziegler told board members he fired Brooks for giving private information to a conservative activist, and for giving private information to the grand jury, school board member John Beatty testified.
Ziegler&#8217;s alleged claim that Brooks had given information to a conservative activist turned out to be false, and it would be illegal to punish her for telling the truth to a jury she&#8217;d been subpoenaed by, prosecutors argued.
At trial, school board member Brenda Sheridan, a Democrat who was chair during the gender-fluid rape coverup, was asked under oath about Ziegler&#8217;s closed-door statements that amounted to a confession. She did not deny Beatty&#8217;s version, but instead refused to answer, saying that because division attorney Robert Falconi was in the room during the discussion, she believed she could invoke attorney-client privilege.
Ziegler, who was wearing earrings and nail polish, did not testify at trial.
Falconi convinced the board to drop their questions about Brooks that June night by falsely saying she could simply appeal.
LCPS, often through its then-attorney Falconi, repeatedly attacked, tried to shut down, and obfuscated to the special grand jury, which Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin promised to convene following the Daily Wire&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says">October 2021 expose</a> of a &#8220;genderfluid&#8221; rape coverup.
The grand jury previously said it would have indicted Falconi for witness tampering because of his central role in the rape coverup, but were hamstrung by the fact that Virginia doesn&#8217;t have a witness tampering law.
Though Ziegler&#8217;s defense attorney Erin Harrigan said in opening arguments that she would show that Ziegler fired Brooks for invading the privacy of her student assailant, she failed to produce evidence that private information was shared or that a policy was violated. None of the witnesses could point to a policy that Brooks violated.
Prosecutors laid out a devastating timeline of retaliation against Brooks, who was trying to get administrators to do something about the fact that a student with intellectual disabilities was grabbing the genitals of her and her teaching assistant Laurie Vandermeulen dozens of times a day, while making crude motions with his tongue. Administrators offered the educators a piece of cardboard called &#8220;no-no hands,&#8221; and told them to hold it in front of their groins. They also offered to buy them dog groomer aprons to wear to &#8220;slow down penetration,&#8221; they said.
At a loss for what to do, Vandermeulen asked a frequent speaker at school board meetings, Ian Prior, to read a letter to the school board expressing that there were two teachers who were being sexually assaulted in class and needed help.
Vandermeulen also sent a record of the assaults she was facing to her personal gmail after fearing a coverup was afoot, which Ziegler&#8217;s attorney initially tried to portray as &#8220;smuggling&#8221; private information, but ultimately failed to show that Vandermeulen violated any policy.
On March 22, 2022, principal Diane Mackey gave Brooks a glowing evaluation. That night, Prior made the speech, which contained no identifying information about the student, the teachers, or even the name of the school. Prior didn&#8217;t know any details about the student and Vandermeulen asked him not to use any names. He only said that teachers had filed a Title IX complaint on a certain date that he hoped the school board would look into.
Mackey saw the school board speech and the student was moved out of Brooks&#8217; classroom the next day, but Brooks became the target of ruthless animus from school administrators.
Soon after, Brooks asked Mackey for a day off to testify to the grand jury, and Mackey demanded to see the subpoena. Ziegler asked HR whether Brooks was a probationary employee, meaning she would be easy to fire. Mackey spoke to Ziegler about Brooks, then <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/in-his-criminal-trial-former-loudoun-county-superintendent-blames-sex-assault-victims" target="_blank" rel="noopener">falsely testified</a> to the grand jury that she had not, she acknowledged this week, chalking it up to a memory error. Mackey also spoke about Brooks to Falconi, the attorney who prosecutors said was Ziegler&#8217;s &#8220;right-hand man.&#8221;
In May, Mackey wrote a negative evaluation and letter to Ziegler recommending that she be fired. Ziegler used the letter the same day to have her fired, suggesting he was waiting on it.
Prosecutors said the year-end evaluation of Brooks showed that school officials had &#8220;fabricated&#8221; the allegations retroactively to justify Ziegler&#8217;s desire to fire her, given that she had a stellar record and had been named Special Ed Teacher of the Year the prior year.
The evaluation focused squarely on the student who was the subject of the trial, saying she had failed to manage his behavior and failed to implement &#8220;plans&#8221; like the cardboard. It, and Ziegler&#8217;s attorney, suggested that Brooks had caused the student to sexually assault her by making him frustrated by refusing to give him an iPad.
The year-end evaluation posed a major timeline problem for the defense: The student never set foot in Brooks&#8217; classroom in between her glowing March evaluation and negative May one. Yet the May one was full of allegations involving her handling of the student that were absent from, or outright contradicted by, the earlier evaluation.
&#8220;She made it up after the fact. Isn&#8217;t it brazen how she did this?&#8221; prosecutor Brandon Wrobleski asked. &#8220;&#8216;We can&#8217;t have more sexual assaults coming out. Anyone who brings sexual assaults to public attention is gone.&#8217; That&#8217;s what happened here,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Look a how well the Family works together when a dissident speaks out. She goes from Teacher of the Year to fired,&#8221; he said.
Ziegler’s attorney Harrigan explained the discrepancy in closing arguments by saying that in between the two evaluations, Mackey had seen that the student supposedly did not assault his new teacher, leading to a conclusion that Brooks and Vendermeulen must have been to blame for their own assaults.
Prosecutor Theo Stamos said the defense had offered no &#8220;motive&#8221; why Brooks and Vandermeulen would voluntarily cause themselves to be sexually assaulted or deprive him of an iPad communication device&#8211;Brooks was actually such a proponent of the communication aid for disabled students that she led a training on it.
The defense&#8217;s evidence that she had caused the assaults by failing to implement administrators&#8217; &#8220;plans&#8221; or not provided him an iPad was based on fleeting observations from a handful of administrators who had stopped in Brooks&#8217; class for a few minutes, and whose testimony at trial suggested that the defense had overstated or misrepresented their observations.
Harrigan emphasized in closing arguments that the law about an employer punishing someone for jury testimony talks about punishing them for being absent. Ziegler was found not guilty of that charge, perhaps because jurors believed he was retaliating against Brooks for what she said to the grand jury, not for taking a day off work to do it.
A month after his January 4 sentencing, Ziegler will face a separate trial on a final misdemeanor charge that was at the core of The Daily Wire&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says">2021 story</a>: His false statement at a school board meeting that there had been no sexual assaults in LCPS restrooms&#8211;part of a screed denigrating parents who were concerned about a transgender policy being discussed&#8211;when in fact he knew that a skirt-wearing boy had anally raped a ninth grader in the girls bathroom just weeks prior.
Harrigan said she plans to file a &#8220;somewhat legally complex&#8221; &#8220;motion to set aside the jury&#8217;s verdict.&#8221;

Jury Finds Former Loudoun County Superintendent Guilty Of Crime Stemming From Trans Rape Coverup

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. – A criminal trial for former Loudoun County Public Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler will head into its fourth day Thursday as he faces charges that he retaliated against a teacher for blowing the whistle on sexual abuse, and for cooperating with a special grand jury empaneled to investigate the school system following its coverup of a bathroom rape.
Former teacher Erin Brooks testified that a 10-year-old autistic student would grab her genitals dozens of times a day while making sexual motions with his tongue, and that when she said her workplace was becoming unsafe, administrators gave her a piece of cardboard to hold in front of her groin and offered to buy her an apron to, as Brooks said, “slow down the penetration.”
Ziegler’s attorney Erin Harrigan and Diane Mackey, the principal of Rosa Lee Carter Elementary, both appeared to blame Brooks and her teaching aide Laurie Vandermeulen for the abuse the educators described in testimony. As far as they knew, they argued in court, the student didn’t do the same to his new teacher, and the teachers failed to implement their suggestions such as the apron.
The trial, in which the school district&#8217;s disgraced former top official faces three misdemeanor charges, could be the best chance at criminal culpability for Loudoun officials after its spokesman was acquitted of felony perjury charges. Outrage over the school system&#8217;s coverup of a rape by a skirt-wearing boy, coupled with the fact that the county&#8217;s prosecutor is a leftist activist who tried to jail the rape victim&#8217;s father, led Gov. Glenn Youngkin to empower a special grand jury to investigate the school system.
The charges Ziegler is facing this week stem from allegations that the administrator punished a teacher for cooperating with that grand jury, and for talking about another incident of sexual abuse which she feared LCPS wanted to cover up.
Brooks said she was a dedicated special education teacher who withstood hitting, spitting, and biting without complaint, but that this was something much worse, and she was concerned for the student as well as herself, but that the school district’s response was “feeble.”
“In my expert opinion, these behaviors were a sign that something is going on, that they’re witnessing or experiencing it. I asked Mrs. Mackey to call [Child Protective Services], but she refused,” Brooks said.
<blockquote>
<h1>Prosecutors asked Mackey to show the jury what she wanted Brooks to use the piece of cardboard for, and Mackey stood up and held it in front of her groin. “I would have expected her to be professional enough to work with this student,” she said.</h1>
</blockquote>
Ziegler’s attorney repeatedly suggested that Brooks was responsible for her own sexual assault because she refused to give the autistic student an iPad, leading to his frustration. The jury heard little evidence from witnesses that this occurred, and none to explain why Brooks — a second-generation special ed teacher — would have a motive to do that.
Brooks and Vandermeulen documented how many times a day they were assaulted at work. They shared the chart by email with Principal Mackey, but she never even opened it. Vandermuelen eventually began forwarding some emails on the topic to her personal Gmail, fearing that they were headed towards another LCPS sex-abuse coverup.
Vandermeulen broke down in tears on the witness stand recounting how she suffered the same abuse — first at the hands of a special needs student, and then at the hands of the school administration when she advocated for it to stop.
She worked to get the attention of the school board but didn’t know how, so a friend introduced her to Ian Prior, a frequent speaker before the school board. Vandermeulen gave Prior only a bare accounting of the difficulty she was facing — a teacher facing sexual abuse who filed a Title IX complaint in March 2022 — and he relayed the same at a school board meeting.
After learning that Vandermeulen had the conversation, Brooks googled Prior’s contact information and messaged him warning him not to disclose any personal information about the child — which it turned out was unnecessary because he didn’t know any.
After the school board meeting — which Mackey watched — the student was immediately removed from Brooks’ and Vendermeulen’s classroom, and Brooks was summoned to the office, believing something was finally being done to help her. Instead, she learned she was being investigated by the school system, and began facing retaliation, she said.
Mackey read her performance evaluation of Brooks in court, which repeatedly seemed to blame her for her own sexual assault, and said her failure to control her classroom led to a student being moved to a different class, which the evaluation said was the major black mark against her.
“Mrs. Brooks displayed rigidity in responding to the needs of a student, resulting in the student being removed from the classroom,” it said.
Prosecutors asked Mackey to show the jury what she wanted Brooks to use the piece of cardboard for, and Mackey stood up and held it in front of her groin. “I would have expected her to be professional enough to work with this student,” she said.
The prosecutor asked “what would be the appropriate professional response to having her genitals touched,” to which Mackey responded, “I don’t know.”
Evidence at trial showed that Brooks was Special Education Teacher of the Year in 2021, and got glowing reviews in early 2022 — only to have Ziegler recommend that the school board fire her, the only teacher he did that to.
The school district began claiming that Brooks violated the student&#8217;s privacy after an education activist made a vague mention of the educators’ workplace safety issue at a school board meeting — there was no mention of the student&#8217;s name or age, or even the name of the school.
In court, Ziegler’s lawyer claimed he asked the board to fire Brooks because LCPS thought it might get sued by the parents of the assailant, despite evidence suggesting that the parents were barely responsive and that the student might even be suffering abuse at home.
Principal Mackey testified that she recommended that Brooks be fired without pressure from Ziegler — but also admitted that her testimony to the grand jury a year ago, in which she denied ever discussing it with him, was false. She remembered on the first day of the trial that she did have a phone call with him about it, she said.
Human resources had not recommended that Brooks be fired, but Ziegler aggressively pushed for her firing anyway in retaliation for filing a Title IX complaint and testifying to the grand jury, the prosecution said.
School board member John Beatty testified that Ziegler told the board that Brooks improperly disclosed private information about a child to a conservative activist (which, testimony at trial showed, was untrue) and to the special grand jury initiated by Gov. Youngkin in response to the &#8220;gender-fluid&#8221; rape coverup (to which she was subpoenaed and legally required to disclose all details). Beatty testified that Ziegler seemed happy to fire Brooks, and that he acted suspiciously when questioned about it.
Principal Mackey acknowledged that when Brooks asked for the day off to testify, she demanded to see the subpoena. Just prior to Ziegler’s indictment, the grand jury issued a report saying that a member of Ziegler&#8217;s cabinet had told school employees and board members not to speak openly with the grand jury, and that it would have indicted Mackey for witness tampering if Virginia had such a law. Mackey said she communicated closely with the cabinet member who issued the warning.
The special grand jury was convened by Gov. Youngkin to investigate LCPS, spurred by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says">The Daily Wire’s October 2021 report</a>. Loudoun’s local prosecutor is a far-Left activist who tried to jail the father of the rape victim. Ziegler is facing three misdemeanors — two involving Brooks, and one which will be tried separately in February for falsely stating that there had been no sexual assaults in the school bathrooms when he knew a &#8220;gender-fluid&#8221; student had done so just weeks prior.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-said-trumps-policies-forced-them-to-cover-up-rape-its-own-lawyers-found-the-opposite-in-secret-report">Loudoun Said Trump’s Policies Forced Them To Cover Up Rape. Its Own Lawyers Found The Opposite In Secret Report.</a>

US-EDUCATION-SCHOOL

In His Criminal Trial, Former Loudoun County Superintendent Blames Sex Assault Victims

A secret internal report commissioned by the Loudoun County, Virginia public school system found that school administrators failed to even look into a 2021 rape by a skirt-wearing boy, in brazen violation of federal Title IX laws governing sexual harassment.
The <a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/BK-Report-Redacted-Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a>, written by Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS)’s own law firm Blankenship &amp; Keith, emerged last week after a judge blocked the school system&#8217;s efforts to continue hiding it. It found that the Title IX rules were clear — especially after changes made under President Donald Trump in 2020 emphasized the need to investigate all allegations of sexual harassment.
LCPS commissioned the report, billing it as an accountability measure and suggesting it would be released to the public. But after the report was written, it reversed course, refusing to disclose it even after Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits, and even initially pursuant to a subpoena from Virginia&#8217;s Attorney General.
Now that it’s been released, one reason for the about-face is clear. Responding to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Daily Wire’s bombshell</a> report in October 2021, the school district&#8217;s then-Superintendent Scott Ziegler held a press conference in which he blamed the federal government and Title IX, saying the primary measure the school district would take in response was lobbying the feds to change regulations.
&#8220;Throughout these recent events, the Loudoun County Public Schools complied with our obligations under Title IX. However, we have found the process outlined under Title IX by the U.S. Department of Education to be insufficient in addressing issues at the K-12 level. We believe the process could be <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-superintendent-apologizes-following-daily-wire-investigation-claims-he-misunderstood-question-about-bathroom-sex-assaults" target="_blank" rel="noopener">strengthened with some reforms</a>,” Ziegler said at the 2021 press conference.
It was a brazen dog-whistle to liberals, conjuring hysterical headlines from recent months that suggested that Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, had implemented rules protecting males accused of sexual violence in educational environments. But the statement by Ziegler was false, according to LCPS&#8217;s own lawyers.
DeVos made many changes to the Title IX regulations, and some addressed how male college students could be tossed off campus with little due process even for spurious accusations of sexual assault. But at the K-12 level, she broadened the range of sexual misconduct that required investigation, and required swift punitive action where applicable.
“Prior to 2020, the Title IX regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Education did not include specific requirements related to sexual harassment. The 2020 amendments to the Title XI regulations set forth the requirements for a school division&#8217;s response to sexual harassment and added the minimum specific, legally binding steps that school divisions must take in response to notice of alleged sexual harassment,” the LCPS lawyers&#8217; report said. “Under the 2020 amendments to the regulations, sexual harassment is defined to include certain types of unwelcome sexual conduct, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.”
That was relevant because while rape was always covered, LCPS administrators had convinced themselves that they didn’t know a rape occurred, and therefore didn’t have an obligation to investigate whether it did. Instead, they claimed, it might have been something less bad, which might not have required a Title IX investigation.
The report said all of this was inapplicable “theoretical” talk.
“The amended Title IX regulations also require school divisions to respond to an allegation of sexual harassment whenever any school employee has notice of sexual harassment,” it said. “Based on the above information that was conveyed to Stone Bridge HS administrators and a school nurse, there can be no doubt that on May 28, 2021, within an hour of the incident, LCPS had actual notice of allegations of sexual harassment as defined by Title IX. Regardless of whether LCPS was certain whether the alleged sexual harassment had occurred, it had notice of alleged misconduct that could meet the definition of sexual harassment.”
But the report said that in violation of Title IX, Loudoun never even began a Title IX investigation.
“Title IX imposed upon LCPS the obligation to have its Title IX Coordinator make an initial assessment of the allegations for Title IX applicability&#8230; Counsel found no evidence that this occurred,” it said.
They also began talking as if they merely had an allegation of “attempted” sexual misconduct, which they claimed might not trigger Title IX. “Ultimately, the Title IX Coordinator concluded that &#8216;my review based on the information we have is this does not rise to the level of Title IX. An allegation of rape yes, an allegation of attempted rape? Maybe,’” the report said.
But they had simply invented the fact that it was an “attempted” rape. The victim immediately reported the rape to the school nurse. Principal Tim Flynn then wrote that it was an “attempted” rape. Pressed on the matter during the perjury trial of spokesman Wayde Byard, who was acquitted, Flynn struggled to explain why he had written that, suggesting the education doctorate did not know the difference between the words “alleged” and “attempted.”
The school system called the police on the rape victim’s father for showing up at the school angry in the hours after the rape, then offered counseling to students who might be traumatized by seeing police at school — falsely saying the police were there only to respond to an angry parent. But LCPS never offered any counseling to the rape victim, its lawyers found.
“LCPS does not appear to have made any outreach to Victim 1 or her family to check on her or to otherwise offer supportive measures as a victim of sexual harassment,” it said, despite Title IX requiring it to &#8220;promptly contact Victim I or her family to discuss the availability and need for supportive measures.&#8221;
Title IX changes during the Trump administration also mandated schools to conduct “threat assessments” to keep students safe after an incident, which LCPS did not do. That might have prevented the rapist from striking again, which he did shortly afterwards, the report said. Even though the Loudoun school board kept all students at home for “distance learning” during COVID, they didn’t consider it for someone who had been arrested for rape and was wearing a GPS ankle monitor, instead returning him to school.
“The 2020 amendments to Title IX feature many principles of threat assessments… Even if the threat assessment did not result in consideration of distance/virtual learning or placement in a specialized school designed to educate students who presented potential safety concerns, the assessment could have helped determine the conditions of, or protocols relating to, the Perpetrator&#8217;s continued education,” it said.
Even after the rape coverup scandal, LCPS did not open any Title IX investigations (except for against the rapist after his second assault and subsequent media coverage). “Since the beginning of SY 2021-22, 159 reports have been submitted by school-based administrators for evaluation as Title IX issues. None of the 159 reports have been determined to meet the threshold to open a Title IX investigation&#8230; Counsel has some concern that the Title IX office may be employing a too restrictive interpretation of Title IX.”
Ziegler heads to a criminal trial next week, where he faces three misdemeanor charges, including one for a false statement in which he denied that there had been any sexual assaults in the schools’ bathrooms, when he knew a gender-fluid teen had allegedly anally raped a ninth-grade girl in the girls’ bathroom just weeks prior. That rapist was later convicted. Ziegler has shown up to court dates so far wearing an earring and nail polish.
The school district&#8217;s lawyer was Robert Falconi, who previously worked for Fairfax County Public Schools, which had <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/questions-mount-over-virginia-schools-lawyer-who-hired-his-former-firm-for-secret-rape-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">been rebuffed</a> by the federal government for, like LCPS, falsely claiming that Title IX required schools to take no action until after law enforcement was done investigating. FCPS also was rebuffed by the courts after making the same argument as LCPS that it didn’t need to investigative whether something occurred unless it was sure that thing had occurred. A lawyer called that a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-mcauliffe-linked-law-firm-fighting-virginia-student-who-said-she-was-gang-raped" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Catch-22</a>.
The school system in neighboring Alexandria recently hired Falconi away from Loudoun, to the consternation of many parents.
Scott Smith, the father of the Loudoun rape victim, is suing LCPS over Title IX violations in federal court in Alexandria. The fact that the report reveals that LCPS’ own lawyers said in strong terms that it egregiously violated Title IX makes it more likely that he could win millions of dollars.
County prosecutor Buta Biberaj, who tried to jail Smith, has loudly bemoaned her efforts to prosecute him for cursing at a leftist activist who said she did not believe that his daughter was raped were thwarted by a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/glenn-youngkin-grants-absolute-pardon-to-loudoun-dad-arrested-at-school-board-meeting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pardon</a> from Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Besty DeVos-2

Loudoun Said Trump’s Policies Forced Them To Cover Up Rape. Its Own Lawyers Found The Opposite In Secret Report.

Donald Trump

Virginia Democrats and Loudoun County&#8217;s George Soros-backed prosecutor are lashing out at Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) over his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/glenn-youngkin-grants-absolute-pardon-to-loudoun-dad-arrested-at-school-board-meeting">Sunday pardon of Scott Smith</a>, whose daughter was raped in school and who the prosecutor, Buta Biberaj, personally sought to put in jail.
Biberaj said Youngkin&#8217;s pardon &#8220;is an unprecedented and inappropriate intervention into an active legal case,&#8221; and said he was taking action &#8220;not for justice but for political gain.&#8221; Scott Surovell, the vice chairman of the Democrat Senate Caucus, said Youngkin&#8217;s pardon was an abandonment of &#8220;law and order&#8221; intended to &#8220;help his failing presidential ambitions.&#8221;
Smith was set to face his second trial this month for the crime of cursing at a leftist activist who said she didn&#8217;t believe his daughter was raped. Smith was arrested after a police officer grabbed him from behind as he was exchanging words with activist Jackie Schworm, leading to a televised tussle with police. But the resisting arrest charge was thrown out, meaning Smith was being prosecuted solely for an angry exchange of words.
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Gov. Youngkin is once again using Loudoun County for his political gain. My full statement below. <a href="https://t.co/fPYEksC93T">pic.twitter.com/fPYEksC93T</a>
&mdash; Buta Biberaj (@ButaBiberaj) <a href="https://twitter.com/ButaBiberaj/status/1700983375153205358?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 10, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Despite Smith having committed no apparent crime, police apprehended him from behind, saying his body language suggested that it might escalate. They bloodied him and kneeled on his chest as he shouted, &#8220;I can&#8217;t breathe.&#8221;
Youngkin&#8217;s pardon stated that his office determined Smith committed no crime, and called into question the &#8220;integrity of the prosecution.&#8221;
State Delegate Candi Mundon King, a black Democrat representing Stafford and Prince William Counties, said on X: &#8220;Didn&#8217;t law enforcement make these charges&#8230; Guess he doesn&#8217;t &#8216;Back the blue&#8217; as much as we thought.&#8221;
Biberaj ran on a platform lamenting &#8220;overincarceration&#8221; and has refused to prosecute many misdemeanors. Democrats, claiming to want to stop people from being arrested for minor crimes in schools, even passed a <a href="https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?201+sum+HB257=">law</a> that &#8220;Eliminates the requirement that school principals report to law enforcement certain enumerated acts that may constitute a misdemeanor offense.&#8221;
When it came to a parent whose lived experience posed a threat to Democrats&#8217; effort to pass a transgender bathroom policy, however, Biberaj personally took Smith&#8217;s case and sought jail time. He was denied a jury because it was a misdemeanor, and he was convicted. A judge threw out the resisting arrest charge after Smith appealed, and threw Biberaj off the case for apparent conflict of interest.
But the government kept fighting Smith, forcing him to head towards a second trial for disorderly conduct. A judge was brought out of retirement from neighboring, deep-blue Fairfax County who ruled that under the “peculiar” language of Virginia’s disorderly conduct statute, Smith arguably committed disorderly conduct by cursing at Schworm because it could “incite” her to violence—even though that interpretation would seemingly mean the leftist activist was guilty of the same crime.
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What kind of sick freak objects to pardoning a dad being charged for confronting the school board that covered up the anal rape of his daughter??? <a href="https://t.co/IRy5SYiz9r">https://t.co/IRy5SYiz9r</a>
&mdash; Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) <a href="https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1701230931921576175?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2023</a></blockquote>
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Judge Howe Brown, who was brought out of retirement from deep-blue Fairfax County to hear the case, suggested Smith might have <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/father-of-loudoun-rape-victim-dealt-another-blow-in-court-when-will-the-healing-begin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">deserved to be assaulted</a> for calling the activist Schworm a &#8220;b&#8212;,&#8221; saying, “I think it incites her to violence. I think he was lucky he didn’t get slapped.&#8221;
Smith told The Daily Wire this week that Schworm had just spoken with his daughter, who was in line to speak into a megaphone, before making a beeline over to him to say she didn&#8217;t believe her story and that she would destroy his plumbing business by attacking it on social media.
&#8220;It&#8217;s obvious&#8221; that Schworm — a member of a Facebook group called <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-teachers-target-parents-critical-race-theory-hacking" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun&#8221;</a> alongside Biberaj, and whose members plotted to destroy anyone who posed an obstacle to the transgender agenda in schools — intended to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/glenn-youngkin-grants-absolute-pardon-to-loudoun-dad-arrested-at-school-board-meeting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">prevent the daughter from telling her story</a> to the world, Smith said.
Her efforts were initially successful, with Smith&#8217;s arrest being used by the Department of Justice and media organizations to paint conservatives as a threat to school boards. The reason for his anger at the school board was unknown until The Daily Wire revealed it five months later, after the rapist attacked a second girl. The rapist was later convicted, but was not placed on the registered sex offender list because of an error by Biberaj.
Smith told The Daily Wire the pardon was necessary because there was no assurance of justice &#8220;anywhere in counties that are run by radical prosecutors.&#8221;

Scott Smith at the Loudoun County Courthouse / The Daily Wire

Democrats Lash Out At Youngkin For Pardoning Father Of Loudoun Rape Victim

George Soros

Parental Rights in Education

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Sunday granted an &#8220;absolute pardon&#8221; to the father who was arrested at a school board meeting after the superintendent lied about his daughter&#8217;s rape by a skirt-wearing boy.
The pardon says that in June 2021, Scott Smith &#8220;exercised his constitutional right to attend a public meeting of the Loudoun County School Board to observe the proceedings, during which time a community member threatened to spread false and malicious information about Mr. Smith&#8217;s business with the intent to damage his reputation.&#8221;
&#8220;After an ensuing verbal confrontation, Scott Thomas Smith was charged with Obstruction of Justice and Disorderly Conduct,&#8221; and Smith was quickly convicted, even though an appeals court later disqualified the prosecutor due to concerns about &#8220;the integrity of the prosecution,&#8221; the pardon continues.
&#8220;<a href="https://www.governor.virginia.gov/media/governorvirginiagov/governor-of-virginia/pdf/Scott-Thomas-Smith---Pardon.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WHEREAS</a> Scott Thomas Smith has been publicly and falsely accused of &#8216;domestic terrorism&#8217; and &#8216;hate crimes&#8217; for attempting to advocate for his daughter, a victim of sexual assault&#8230; I have decided it is just and appropriate to grant this ABSOLUTE PARDON that reflects Scott Thomas Smith&#8217;s factual innocence,&#8221; it concludes.
Smith&#8217;s story galvanized parents who were concerned that schools had sacrificed student safety and academic rigor for ideology. Youngkin&#8217;s pledge to be a voice for those parents helped usher him into office a month after The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">revealed</a> Smith&#8217;s story.
Democrat prosecutor Buta Biberaj bucked her typical soft-on-crime stances and personally argued to put Smith in jail for misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Smith was denied a jury because it was a misdemeanor in General District Court, and a judge quickly convicted him.
He appealed the ruling, and would have been entitled to a jury in appeals court. But the legal saga has dragged on for years, taking a financial and emotional toll on Smith, who says he&#8217;s grateful Youngkin allowed him to move on.
&#8220;I&#8217;m thankful that the Youngkin administration gave me an off-ramp to these charges that never should have happened,&#8221; Smith told The Daily Wire. &#8220;It&#8217;s kind of bittersweet, because I really looked forward to winning this in court. But unfortunately, our justice system is so screwed up right now that I didn&#8217;t feel that I could potentially get a fair shot in court.&#8221;
&#8220;That&#8217;s what should scare every American&#8211;is that I had to take this, because I could not trust our justice system,&#8221; Smith said.
As Smith&#8217;s legal saga dragged on, the same system that prosecuted Smith <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-jury-find-schools-spokesman-not-guilty-of-perjury" target="_blank" rel="noopener">acquitted</a> Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman Wayde Byard for perjury charges. The day Smith&#8217;s daughter was raped, Byard wrote an email to parents that falsely blamed Smith for police presence and falsely said that no students were in danger, even as the rapist remained on the loose.
The rapist was eventually convicted in juvenile court, but due to a mistake by Biberaj, will not be placed on the sex offenders registry.
Smith said that on the night of the June 2021 school board meeting, where school board members were discussing passing a policy to allow transgender students to use the restrooms of their choice, his daughter had intended to say through a megaphone how just a few weeks before, she had been raped in a school bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt.
&#8220;That&#8217;s why Jackie attacked us, was to stop [my daughter] from speaking,&#8221; he said, referring to Jackie Schworm, a radical Leftist who had just spoken to Smith&#8217;s daughter, then sought out Smith and threatened to use social media to ruin his business. A police officer grabbed Smith from behind, and a struggle ensued.
An appeals court said that the prosecutor <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-throws-soros-backed-prosecutor-off-of-case-against-loudoun-rape-victims-father" target="_blank" rel="noopener">may have been biased</a>, but that the fact that he <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/father-of-loudoun-rape-victim-dealt-another-blow-in-court-when-will-the-healing-begin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cursed at Schworm was enough to retry him</a>. Smith said that even if his appeal would have prevailed, &#8220;radical prosecutors&#8221; had already punished him by putting him through a years-long process.
&#8220;The damage has already been done,&#8221; Smith said. &#8220;This process has been absolutely brutal, because it took away some of my family treasure that [could have gone to] my daughter&#8217;s situation.&#8221;
The media plastered around the world a picture of Smith being dragged away by police, and used him as a symbol of how angry conservative parents were supposedly disrupting school board meetings out of bigotry and ignorance. The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/national-school-board-association-at-risk-of-total-collapse-following-letter-comparing-parents-to-domestic-terrorists" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National School Boards Association</a> likened him to a domestic terrorist in a letter that the Biden administration used to mobilize anti-terrorism forces against parents.
Only The Daily Wire bothered to ask Smith whether he had a good reason to be mad at the school board. It turned out that not only had his daughter been raped, and the superintendent lied about it, but that the school system <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">kept the rapist in school</a>, where he sexually assaulted a second girl.
&#8220;They villainized me and my family from the minute my daughter reported that she was sexually assaulted, pretty much until present time,&#8221; he said.
Biberaj wanted &#8220;to make an example out of me to scare people from speaking out. And quite frankly, it worked,&#8221; Smith said, noting that far fewer parents have turned out to school board meetings and spoken out since his arrest.
He said his next legal step will be to sue the prosecutor for misconduct, and possibly the National School Boards Association.
The pardon from Youngkin, who enjoys high favorability ratings in what was previously considered a blue state, continues a fulfillment of his campaign promise to focus on parental rights in education. On Tuesday, he will hold a &#8220;Parents Matter&#8221; conversation in Loudoun&#8211;at Cornerstone Chapel, a church that was placed on an enemies list by a group of liberal activists called the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/northern-virginia-leftists-secretly-plotted-to-guard-democrats-from-trans-rape-fallout" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Loudoun Love Warriors</a>.
The church&#8217;s pastor said it&#8217;s &#8220;ironic that those who espouse ‘tolerance’ the most, are actually some of the most intolerant people toward those of us with different views and values.”
A member of the Love Warriors was arrested on <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/leftist-activist-arrested-in-loudoun-county-after-threatening-to-burn-down-historic-site-sheriff-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">felony charges</a> this month. Biberaj has not responded questions about whether she intends to drop charges, prosecute, or recuse herself.

Glenn Youngkin Grants ‘Absolute Pardon’ To Loudoun Dad Arrested At School Board Meeting

Glenn Youngkin

A Leftist activist who is part of the “Loudoun Love Warriors,” a group that works closely with Democrat politicians in Virginia&#8217;s Loudoun County and has threatened members who challenge its policy goals, was arrested Friday for allegedly making violent threats, The Daily Wire has learned.
Derek Summers, a rapper who frequently poses with guns on social media, was arrested on Friday and &#8220;charged with a class five felony under Virginia law for making a threat against Oatlands, a historic property in Leesburg, Virginia,&#8221; according to a spokeswoman for the Loudoun County sheriff&#8217;s office, which was notified about the threat by the property.
In a video posted to his Facebook, Summers said he became enraged after seeing people having a &#8220;good time&#8221; at Oatlands, a historic site that dates back to <a href="https://oatlands.org/history-then-now/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">colonial times</a>, because there used to be slaves there.
“I actually like to go there to connect with my roots and see I don&#8217;t know, kind of bear witnesses,&#8221; Summer said. &#8220;If the place is going to be there, if they&#8217;re going to make it historical, then that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s there for. I don&#8217;t think it should be for people to sit and have a good time. There were people there enjoying themselves and that bothered me.&#8221;
Oatlands, a National Trust Historic Site, is now run by a nonprofit that offers it as a nature-filled park and educates people about its history, including telling the forgotten story of enslaved people who once toiled there.
Summers denied that he made any threats. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t threaten anyone and that will be that,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire. He said in the Facebook video that after leaving Oatlands, he made an online post that referenced burning it down, but was not being literal. “I take extreme reservation with a plantation,” he said.
Oatlands CEO Caleb M. Schutz told The Daily Wire that he could not comment on an &#8220;ongoing case.&#8221;
Summers maintains ties with top officials in the county — in addition to a close relationship with far-Left prosecutor Buta Biberaj, Summers was once invited to the White House by the county&#8217;s top official, Chair Phyllis Randall, who he called his &#8220;biGG sistah&#8221; and a &#8220;friend.&#8221;
In May, The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/soros-prosecutors-staffer-dem-candidate-in-violence-tinged-group-that-plotted-against-conservative-parents" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that Summers was in a secret Facebook group with a campaign staffer for Biberaj named Andrew Pihonak, an aide to School Board Chair Ian Serotkin, a local reporter, and other Loudoun activists in which members made violent threats against political opponents.
“Someone gonna get hurt on their side and I hope I get to do it,” Summers wrote. “I’m sooo ready to show up with guns lol.”
After Pihonack falsely accused a conservative resident who spoke before the school board of threatening to drown gays, Summers plotted how to retaliate. “Reciprocation is our only move,&#8221; Summers said. &#8220;And I don’t care how that comes across … SOMETHING has to happen to one of them.”
“If he had said that s*** about black kids or autistic kids I would shoot him,” Summers added. “People get ended for less than that&#8230; They know I don’t care about jail or lawsuits.&#8221;
<blockquote>
<h1>Elicia Brand, who a Loudoun Love Warrior suggested should be “curb-stomped,” said the Love Warriors are so fixated about who wins races for sheriff and prosecutor because they believe that their candidates won’t enforce laws against them.</h1>
</blockquote>
The Loudoun County Democratic Committee disavowed the Loudon Love Warriors, but not the county&#8217;s prosecutor, Buta Biberaj.
On June 6 she wrote to Sheriff Mike Chapman, a Republican, instructing him to investigate a <a href="https://wjla.com/news/local/loudoun-love-warriors-sheriff-investigation-billboards-buta-biberaj-phyllis-randall-commonwealths-attorney-board-facebook-group-social-media-threats-parents-accuracy-in-media-adam-guillette" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conservative group that criticized</a> the Loudoun Love Warriors by renting billboard trucks with quotes from their members. &#8220;I have been contacted by several members of the Loudoun community who have expressed fear and concern about being harassed and intimidated,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;Please assign a member of your team to investigate this matter so as to prevent any unlawfulness.&#8221; She cited two states in the Virginia code, both of which appear to be civil statutes that did not apply.
<div id="attachment_615179" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-615179" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-615179" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/summers-randal-composite-1024x570.png" alt="Left, Derek Summers with Loudoun Chair Phyllis Randall. Right, Summers' felony mug shot. (Facebook/Sheriff's Office)" width="1024" height="570" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/summers-randal-composite-1024x570.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/summers-randal-composite-300x167.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/summers-randal-composite-768x427.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/summers-randal-composite-1536x854.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/09/summers-randal-composite-2048x1139.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Left, Derek Summers with Loudoun Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall. Right, Summers&#8217; felony mug shot. (Facebook/Sheriff&#8217;s Office)</div>
On June 20, Summers and other Loudoun Love Warriors made up a sizable portion of the volunteers at her victory party after winning the Democrat primary.
Biberaj did not return a request for comment on whether she will prosecute Summers, or recuse herself from the case due to conflict of interest. After she recused from another case involving school board politics, it was assigned to a fellow Soros prosecutor from a different jurisdiction, who dropped it.
Summers in the Facebook video presented himself as legally untouchable, boasting about all the times legal efforts against him have failed.
“I spent about 3.5 hours in custody yesterday, I&#8217;m out on PR bond right now. My lawyer&#8217;s about to go 3-0 this year,” he said.
That’s a reference to the time a Left-wing Loudoun judge <a href="https://www.loudountimes.com/news/education/loudoun-love-warriors-chat-group-informant-denied-protection-order-against-group-member/article_78ace610-2033-11ee-8b43-af5f2ce402b5.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">denied</a> a request for a protective order filed by a conservative mom. Summers testified in that matter that although he called her a “cracker,” he didn’t mean it as a racial slur.
In a video soon after, Summers laughed at the idea that he was not a dangerous person, and about the audacity of his testimony in court. “I was talking about beating the case because I don’t be dangerous and don’t be around dangerous people (hahahah) I’m ‘bout to crack me a whole cracker today,” he said.
“I called this lady a cracker in court and then this super crackified lawyer said you throw racial slurs around… he said ‘did you call her a cracker?’ and I said ‘no’ and he was stuck because I literally just called her one in front of everyone,” he said.
“He said ‘what would you do if someone called you racial slurs?’ and I said ‘are you trying to imply that cracker is anywhere near as bad as the n-word?’ and he looked up at the black female judge whose dreadlocks are a little longer than mine,” he said.
In another video, he recounted interacting with five police officers in July after he attempted to fight a man because “the day of the hate-filled privileged cis male, add all that Christian white male whatever, is over with.” He said the man “consented” to a fight by crossing the street.
He said that it is important to replace Sheriff Chapman with Craig Buckley, a Democrat candidate for sheriff whose campaign consultant was also a member of the Love Warriors. “We about to get Chapman out of here, we about to get a real solid individual, an actual human being in office,” Summers said.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares had proposed a bill giving his office powers to step in and prosecute cases that local prosecutors would not, but it was killed by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Victoria LaCivita, a spokeswoman forMiyares, told The Daily Wire that Miyares is &#8220;concerned for the integrity of the justice system,&#8221; and said that Buteraj should recuse herself from the case.
&#8220;An elected Commonwealth’s Attorney should not use her position to shield her political allies from prosecution while at the same time using her position to pursue her political adversaries,&#8221; LaCivita said. &#8220;The law in Virginia is clear, that when a Commonwealth’s Attorney has a relationship with an accused that makes it improper for him or her to act, the Commonwealth’s Attorney should recuse himself or herself and I call on the Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney to do so immediately.”
Elicia Brand, a conservative mother who a Loudoun Love Warrior suggested should be “curb-stomped,” said the reason the Loudoun Love Warriors are so fixated about who wins races for sheriff and prosecutor is because they believe that their candidates won’t enforce laws against them.
“He just keeps getting away with it. And it’s because of people like Buta who allow these people to act with impunity and they get more and more brazen until one day they hurt someone,” she told The Daily Wire. “It&#8217;s disheartening to see how his close ties to Buta and Randall may be influencing the course of justice.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/soros-prosecutors-staffer-dem-candidate-in-violence-tinged-group-that-plotted-against-conservative-parents" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Soros Prosecutor’s Staffer, Dem Candidate In Violence-Tinged Group That Plotted Against Conservative Parents</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/northern-virginia-leftists-secretly-plotted-to-guard-democrats-from-trans-rape-fallout" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Virginia Leftists Secretly Plotted To Guard Democrats From Trans Rape Fallout</a>

Derek Summers / Youtube

Leftist Activist Arrested In Loudoun County After Threatening To Burn Down Historic Site, Sheriff Says

Crime

LOUDOUN COUNTY, VA — Wayde Byard, the now-suspended spokesman of Loudoun County Public Schools, was found not guilty of perjury Thursday in a case related to the coverup of a bathroom rape.
The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for 90 minutes before reaching its verdict. Byard was accused of lying to a grand jury that he didn’t learn of the May 28, 2021, sexual assault of a ninth-grade girl until months later.
&#8220;You are free to go sir,&#8221; Chief Judge Douglas Fleming said after the verdict was read.
Outside of court after the verdict, Byard told the media: “People appearing before a grand jury, I have a suggestion. Learn three three-word phrases: I don&#8217;t know, I forget, and I can&#8217;t recall. If you say that, you&#8217;ll be fine.&#8221;
He said he may or may not return to his job as LCPS spokesman. “I&#8217;m going to talk to people next week,” he said. “FCPS is still my work family, has been for 23 years, so we&#8217;ll talk about that later.”
Asked about his lawyer’s assertion that he was a “fall guy” for LCPS administration, he said “I feel like maybe I was the stand-in for other LCPS employees who could have met this fate. There was a lot of people who appeared before the grand jury who were higher ranked than I was.”
The decision is the latest development in a story <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">broken</a> by The Daily Wire that shone a spotlight on public schools&#8217; embrace of radical gender theory and helped now-Governor Glenn Youngkin ride a wave of parental anger to an upset victory. A troubled cross-dressing student was later convicted of raping a classmate in a girls&#8217; restroom, the victim&#8217;s father was arrested for protesting at a school board meeting, and a grand jury report excoriated multiple officials&#8217; handling of the matter.
Principal Timothy Flynn <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/felony-trial-for-loudoun-schools-spokesman-begins-over-rape-coverup" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testified</a> that on May 28, 2021, after a girl came to the office to report that she&#8217;d been raped, his staff called police and the girl&#8217;s family, and that the girl&#8217;s father showed up angry at what had occurred and caused a scene. Flynn testified that he told Byard clearly that day that a girl reported a rape and her father showed up at school angry about it, adding “This is bad.”
Byard, his boss Communications Director Joan Sahlgren, and now-indicted Superintendent Scott Ziegler drafted a statement that went out to parents that day that explained police presence at the school by saying the situation was simply a disruptive parent—without mentioning that the parent was angry because his daughter had just been raped—and stating that there was “no threat to the student body” even as the rapist was at large.
His grand jury testimony “might not have been 100% accurate,” defense attorney Jennifer Leffler said. “He gave it his best shot.”
But Leffler said Flynn’s memory was also not reliable because he wrongly said that a videoconference in which he told Superintendent Scott Ziegler and Deputy Superintendent Ashley Ellis about the sexual incident was at 7:30 p.m. instead of 3:30 p.m.
Prosecutors said Flynn was openly telling those officials and it would make no sense that the one person he did not tell was Byard, whose job dealt with managing the school system’s reputation. “Mr. Byard wants us to believe that he never asks why the parent who caused a disturbance was upset. It defies common sense,” prosecutor Jason Faw said.
Leffler suggested that all those officials may have thought it was just voluntary sex in a school, but Faw said the superintendent and deputy superintendent&#8217;s involvement in writing the statement showed that they know the situation was more severe than a disruptive dad or voluntary sex&#8211;and that Byard knew that&#8217;s why his superiors got involved in his statement. “Why would the top two individuals in LCPS draft an email about an angry parent?” he said.
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Faw said that Sahlgren knew of the sexual assault and Byard was the point person for relaying information to her. She testified to the grand jury that she thought Byard told her, but at trial, where her testimony could have corroborated Flynn&#8217;s, she said she wasn’t sure. She and other LCPS brass repeatedly said they <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-schools-honchos-in-perjury-trial-testify-they-cant-remember-almost-anything-about-rape-scandal">did not recall</a> basic details in court this week, a fact noted by lawyers from both sides.
Faw said Byard “accidentally commit[ed] the truth” when he told the grand jury that he learned in June&#8211;when Scott Smith was arrested at a school board meeting where Ziegler lied about the rape&#8211;that he was the father of the rape victim, even though he said he didn’t know there was a rape until October.
Laffer said Ziegler lying helped Byard’s case. “His boss then said we have no reports of sexual assault in bathrooms. He’s entitled to believe his boss.”
Smith told The Daily Wire after the verdict that Byard’s message to parents that day that misrepresented why police were at school was the start of a coverup. “We feel that the coverup started immediately that day on May 28 and continues on to this day. It seems no one can tell the truth or remember what happened,” he said.
Theo Stamos, the top special prosecutor and a former elected Democrat prosecutor, said in closing arguments that Byard did not merely misspeak. “The defendant is a paid communicator … His stock in trade is words … He knows everything that’s going on, he’s been in the school system for longer than any of these people. He asks questions and knows where the bodies are buried.”

Wayde Byard

Loudoun Jury Find Schools Spokesman Not Guilty Of Perjury

LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA &#8212; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/loudoun-county" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Loudoun County</a> Public Schools’ top officials, testifying Wednesday in the felony perjury trial of a colleague, made potentially hard-to-believe statements of their own as they said, over and over again, that they had little familiarity with, or couldn’t remember details of, the scandal that captured the nation’s attention and has defined local politics for two years.
The attorney for now-suspended Public Information Officer Wayde Byard said while Principal Tim Flynn testified that he told Byard clearly in a phone call that a girl alleged she was raped in the bathroom &#8212; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/felony-trial-for-loudoun-schools-spokesman-begins-over-rape-coverup">contradicting</a> the sworn statement Byard made to a grand jury that he didn’t know about it until months later &#8212; one witness wasn’t enough for a conviction.
Byard’s boss, Communications Director Joan Sahlgren, and Deputy Superintendent Ashley Ellis might have been in a position to serve as corroborating witnesses; prosecutors said Sahlgren told a grand jury earlier this year that she believes Byard told her about the rape that day. But on Wednesday, she backtracked, saying she wasn’t so sure. In all, both women claimed to have virtually no recollection of anything beyond what prosecutors already could prove from subpoenaed emails and other papers.
An <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">October 2021 Daily Wire story</a> led to the indictment of both Sahlgren’s boss (Superintendent Scott Ziegler) and subordinate and, lawyers from both sides said, “propelled your school system into the hot white light of public concern.” Despite Salgren’s job being managing news about the school system, on Wednesday she contended to the jury that she didn’t remember receiving The Daily Wire’s email explaining the story it was about to break and asking for information, and claimed she did not know or could not recall what the story, which captured the nation&#8217;s attention for weeks, ultimately said. (Emails obtained through a subpoena show that the request for comment sent her into high alert, ordering Byard to “TAKE NO ACTION.”)
Ellis, the school system’s second-highest ranking official, told jurors she only “vaguely” recalled May 28, 2021 &#8212; the day of the rape &#8212; and some sort of “situation,” despite her own notes from the day showing she wrote down “anal penetration” and “police handling,” and acknowledging that those topics would stand out in her work.
Byard, Sahlgren, and now-indicted Superintendent Scott Ziegler drafted a statement that went out to parents that day that explained police presence at the school by saying the situation was simply an “angry parent” &#8212; without mentioning that the parent was angry because his daughter had just been raped &#8212; and stating that there was “no threat to the student body” even as a rapist was at large.
An email uncovered by prosecutors showed that on that day, Ellis wrote an email suggesting that they make the statement less misleading. “Can we say [the incident causing police to respond] was confined to the main office? No sure that was true,” she wrote, according to prosecutors.
Jennifer Leffler, Byard’s defense attorney, contended that Flynn didn’t tell Byard about the rape, but merely about an angry parent. However, evidence at trial suggested that Flynn had openly told other top officials about it, and that all the executives knew, including Sahlgren, who generally got information from Byard. “Flynn is telling everyone,” prosecutor Jason Faw said. “Why would Wayde Byard be the only person he didn’t tell?”
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Faw said that Chief of Staff Mark Smith had been fired over his handling of the rape, and that Byard had a motive to lie for fear of being next.
Byard’s defense attorney set out a theory in which she suggested that Byard might have said under oath that he didn’t know about a rape because he didn’t believe the victim and thought it was merely consensual anal sex that the school system had asked the police to investigate. She did not explain how this would square with the way that Flynn found out about the incident: by the girl coming to the office in tears and reporting that she had been raped. Prosecutors said the theory also didn’t fly because Byard additionally responded in the negative to a question that called it a rape allegation.
Faw said that in grand jury testimony, Byard “acknowledges being told something about a boyfriend/girlfriend in a bathroom that ‘went sideways,’ which sounds a lot like a sexual assault to me, but then he goes into denial mode.” Byard told the grand jury he was told “really nothing” about a sexual assault.
Faw said Byard “slipped up” in his grand jury testimony by, despite claiming he didn’t know about the May rape until around October, also saying that he learned that Scott Smith was “the father of the victim” when Smith was arrested on June 22. That’s the day of the infamous school board meeting where Ziegler lied that there had never been a bathroom rape, while pushing a transgender policy, and Smith again became enraged and was arrested.
Prosecutors played video of the arrest in which Smith’s wife can be heard screaming, “my daughter was raped at school and this is what happens!” Byard did not testify at his trial on Wednesday, but prosecutors said he told the grand jury earlier this year that he was at the meeting and standing feet away from Smith’s wife at the time.
Prosecutors also pointed to another email that they said shows that Byard was aware of the rape, which school official Kevin Lewis contemporaneously noted could affect the school’s then-proposed transgender policy because the rapist was wearing a skirt. Byard sent Ziegler an email in August 2021 containing a <a href="https://www.loudounnow.com/news/public_safety/smith-found-guilty-in-school-board-scuffle/article_9ed6026d-1363-52d3-8c82-ef70594d2c22.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">local news article</a> about Smith’s sentencing for disorderly conduct, at which his attorney explained that he was angry because her daughter had been raped. Also, in an email shortly after the rape, he refers to “the same family” from the earlier incident, indicating he knew why the father was at school and angry that day, prosecutors said.
Judge Douglas Fleming said that on Thursday, the jury will decide the outcome after weighing the credibility of the witnesses. “I don’t think Mr. Flynn left any doubt, if you believe his testimony, about what he said” to Byard, he said.
He said that a false statement about a school official’s knowledge of a rape, during a grand jury looking into a rape coverup, was far from incidental. “We’re here because it was very material. ‘It was bad.’ ‘It was unique.’ ‘Never dealt with it before,’” he said, quoting witnesses, some of whom simultaneously said they had little memory of the unusual and severe situation. “The jury can reach its own conclusion,” he said.

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