Special prosecutors representing Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares on Thursday moved to drop the criminal case against Loudoun County Public Schools’ former superintendent, Scott Ziegler, who was fired over a rape coverup.
Ziegler was already convicted by a jury in the case, but a judge overturned the conviction on a technicality, saying that although there was “ample evidence” to support the charge, it would have to be retried. Miyares’ office said it will no longer seek that retrial after LCPS settled a civil lawsuit with a teacher whose testimony was key in the case.
In October 2021, The Daily Wire reported that at a school board meeting over a proposed transgender policy, Ziegler dismissed concerns about safety by stating that no sexual assaults had ever occurred in Loudoun’s bathrooms, despite knowing that a boy wearing a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says">skirt and blouse allegedly raped </a>a ninth-grader in a girls bathroom just weeks prior. LCPS also filed false paperwork with the state concealing the incident. The policy was passed and the boy remained in the school system, despite the police charging him with rape. That allowed him to sexually assault a second girl in October. He was convicted on both counts.
A special grand jury was convened to look into Loudoun’s handling of sexual abuse, and it resulted in a felony perjury charge against the school’s then-spokesman, and two misdemeanors against Ziegler. One was for the false statement at the school board meeting, and the other was for allegedly firing a teacher, Erin Brooks, in retaliation for her speaking to the grand jury.
In September 2023, Ziegler was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jury-finds-former-loudoun-county-superintendent-guilty-of-charges-stemming-from-trans-rape-coverup">convicted</a> of the latter charge, which carried a penalty of up to a year in jail. He showed up to his trial wearing nail polish and an earring. Prosecutors then <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/virginia-drops-remaining-criminal-charge-against-loudoun-superintendent-who-lied-about-rape" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dropped</a> the other charge, explaining that they were satisfied that he was now a convicted criminal and there was no need for the time and expense of a second trial. But that logic no longer held when the judge overturned the conviction on a technicality. Judge Douglas Fleming wrote that there was “ample evidence” to support Ziegler’s conviction in the Brooks case, but that it would have to be retried.
In June 2022, Brooks also brought a civil lawsuit seeking money over the same issue, suing LCPS and a principal. It settled last November, not long before the criminal retrial, which was set to take place next month. Miyares’ motion to close the case said “Since this Court’s ruling setting aside the earlier conviction, the complaining witness has resolved her civil suit against the defendant and the Loudoun County Public Schools. The complaining witness is grateful to the Office of the Attorney General for its efforts in obtaining the initial conviction, but now desires to put this entire matter behind her.” Brooks’ cooperation would have been key to securing another criminal conviction.
LCPS has a history of paying people who allege that they have been wronged by its employees in exchange for both not pursuing legal action and their silence. The Daily Wire is currently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-sues-loudoun-schools-for-misusing-privacy-protections-to-hide-wrongdoing">suing</a> the district for its payouts to resolve allegations of wrongdoing against it, including the contracts with language such as secrecy clauses. LCPS has acknowledged that it is hiding at least 10 settlements since May 2023.
<div id="attachment_472476" style="width: 1210px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-472476" class="size-full wp-image-472476" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/rapist-pic1200.png" alt="" width="1200" height="651" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/rapist-pic1200.png 1200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/rapist-pic1200-300x163.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/rapist-pic1200-1024x556.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/rapist-pic1200-768x417.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" />The Loudoun County Public Schools rapist / Social media screenshot</div>
Those include a settlement with the second girl assaulted by the rapist, which used an out-of-district court, the Alexandria Circuit Court, to conceal the deal and place the entire case under seal. In the FOIA lawsuit in Loudoun court, LCPS has refused to show even that judge a copy of the settlement, or disclose its dollar amount. Her family said after the grand jury released its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/grand-jury-finds-virginia-school-bathroom-rape-handling-worse-than-known-rips-officials-intentional-amnesia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fact-finding report</a> — leading to Ziegler&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-school-board-fires-superintendent-who-lied-about-bathroom-rape" target="_blank" rel="noopener">firing</a> — that “since our daughter was assaulted, not one member of the school board, LCPS administration, or even our local high school leadership has reached out to check on how she is doing, lend any type of support or even apologize for what we are going through as a family. That alone speaks volumes to what we have endured throughout this ordeal.”
The school system&#8217;s indulgence in controversial politics has also been expensive for taxpayers — or its insurance company — through significant bills for the time of outside lawyers. LCPS responded to a FOIA request from The Daily Wire for legal bills with totals showing nearly $2 million to outside attorneys between the June 2021 rape and 2023. Missing were any payments to Ziegler’s attorneys, and LCPS ignored FOIA appeals questioning its completeness. Ziegler’s attorneys later filed a lawsuit against LCPS saying it had <a href="https://www.loudountimes.com/0local-or-not/1local/law-firm-representing-ziegler-says-lcps-owes-617k-in-legal-fees/article_798629dc-f906-11ee-9b1d-ff577cf00612.html">refused to pay his bills</a>, seemingly suggesting that Ziegler was on his own. Spokesman Dan Adams did not answer questions about the Brooks settlement for this story, which also asked its current position on whether Ziegler had to pay his own legal bills or not.
The former spokesman facing the felony perjury charge was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-schools-honchos-in-perjury-trial-testify-they-cant-remember-almost-anything-about-rape-scandal">acquitted</a> after a parade of LCPS officials testified that they could not recall basic details of what had transpired.
Out of all of LCPS’ 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’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’d been subpoenaed by, prosecutors argued.
At trial, school board member Brenda Sheridan, a Democrat who was chair during the rape coverup, was asked under oath about Ziegler’s closed-door statements that amounted to a confession. She did not deny Beatty’s version, but instead refused to answer.

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

Criminal Charge Against Loudoun County Superintendent Dropped After Victim Is Paid Off

Education

Loudoun County

Virginia

WASHINGTON, D.C. &#8212; <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> on Friday told hundreds of moms from across the country that Democrat policies are harming children, and that a second Trump administration will prioritize the rights of parents.
He spoke for an hour at a conference organized by Moms For Liberty just two blocks from the White House, which some pledged to “fight like a mother” to make his home once again.
Trump said that the Biden-Harris open border policies, which include letting any child across the border as long as they are “unaccompanied” by a parent, cruelly lead to Hispanic children being placed in vulnerable situations.
“Massive percentages of women are being raped and beat to hell coming up in the caravans,” he said. “Mothers give their daughters big bottles of birth control because they know it’s bad coming up.”
The loophole for “unaccompanied minors” persists even under Biden’s recent executive order tightening the border, and Harris’ Democratic National Convention platform reaffirms its commitment to it. Trump suggested that the exemption induced family separation, encouraging children to split off from their parents and come to the U.S. alone, where they are at the whims of traffickers. “We’re getting them to come up, telling them you’ll get free [things],” he said.
Nearly 500,000 “unaccompanied minors” have crossed the border, and Biden eliminated DNA testing requirements and reduced vetting, sending them to live with unrelated “sponsors.” About a third of children <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/whistleblowers-detail-how-85000-unaccompanied-minors-went-missing-after-biden-admin-dropped-them-off-with-sponsors">go missing</a> after being sent to live with sponsors.
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Trump said American children also suffer from the migrant influx. “They’re going into the classroom, carrying disease and they don’t even speak english. It’s crazy,” he said. “I thought New York had no money, yet they’re spending billions of dollars on illegal immigrants. … When you think that 21 million people came into our country, that’s bigger than New York. Nobody can take that.”
Trump said foreign leaders are getting rid of criminals in their society by dumping them on the U.S., and that American youth are “being killed by illegal aliens” &#8212; two words he said Democrats don’t want people to use because “they want to take away all the words so you can&#8217;t talk about the subject.” He said that two days ago, he was at the border with parents who had lost a child due to migrant crime.
He said he believes 85-90% of the country does not want to be flooded with illegal immigrants, and that he will deport them. “The highest deportation was a pretty moderate guy, but he hated that our country was being swamped, Dwight Eisenhower,” he said.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-789049" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-2.jpg" alt="" width="2400" height="1300" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-2.jpg 2400w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-2-300x163.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-2-1024x555.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-2-768x416.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-2-1536x832.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-2-2048x1109.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" /></div>
Trump said he would restore rights to parents, citing the story of the Loudoun County transgender rape coverup broken by The Daily Wire in which the victim’s father was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/glenn-youngkin-grants-absolute-pardon-to-loudoun-dad-arrested-at-school-board-meeting">prosecuted</a>.
“You have these parents that get in fistfights at school board meetings, and they mean well. Especially in Loudoun County,” he said. “The parents truly love the kids. Some of these people on the boards, I think they don’t like the kids very much, with what they’re doing. You have to give the rights back to the parents. This administration, the FBI goes after the parents. We’ll change that on the first day.”
He also said he would ensure that girls can compete in sports without being thwarted by mediocre boys. “Who would want men playing in women’s sports?” he asked. “The Olympics was the best thing I’ve seen because you really see when these boxers come out, it was so ridiculous … it’s so demeaning to women.”
Parents are a key constituency for Republicans as Democrats have rapidly politicized public education, even fighting against merit and rigor — such as gifted and talented schools — in the name of “equity.”
Trump was introduced by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who attributed his own success to his mother vigilantly monitoring his treatment at the hands of New York’s public schools.
Moms for Liberty formed three years ago out of anger at extended school closures pushed by Democrats at the behest of teachers unions. It is now widely accepted that the moms’ position was the correct one.
Democrats have sought to simply act as if the misstep never occurred, but many at the Moms for Liberty convention believed that children are still suffering from a year of lost learning, and that Democrats should pay a price at the ballot box.
Yet one person wore a mask to Trump’s speech in 2024: a reporter camped in a press area, who was also one of the few not to stand for the national anthem.
<div id="attachment_789047" style="width: 2570px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-789047" class="size-full wp-image-789047" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-3-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="2560" height="1920" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-3-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-3-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-3-768x576.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-3-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/08/m4l-3-2048x1536.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px" />A journalist wears a mask to be around conservatives in 2024</div>

Trump at Moms for Liberty

Trump Makes His Case To Parents In Moms For Liberty Speech, Citing Effects To Children Of Open Borders, Transgender Ideology

Byron Donalds

Donald Trump

Elections

Immigration

Parental Rights in Education

Politics

Law enforcement identified 39-year-old Toby Shane Kessler as the man who broke into a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/virginia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Virginia</a> campaign office for former President Donald Trump last weekend.
The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said authorities were still trying to locate Kessler, who they say <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/authorities-search-for-man-who-broke-into-trump-campaign-office" target="_blank" rel="noopener">broke into</a> the Trump for President 2024 office located in Ashburn, Virginia, around 8:11 p.m. on Sunday. The office, about 30 miles northwest of Washington, D.C.,  is being leased by the Trump campaign. 
Kessler has been charged with burglary and could face up to 20 years in prison and a $2,500 fine if convicted. 
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“The LCSO’s investigation determined that Mr. Kessler forced entry into a back door of the location and spent a brief period of time inside before leaving,” the sheriff’s office said. “He appears to have left nothing behind, and it is still unclear what, if anything, he took with him. The investigation is ongoing.”
Kessler was described as a white adult male with dark clothing, a cap, and a backpack. Law enforcement said that Kessler doesn’t have a “fixed address.” 
“Mr. Kessler has a history of criminal behavior and appears to have been in the Washington metropolitan area at least since 2018. He has a California identification,” the sheriff’s office said. 
Court <a href="https://eapps.courts.state.va.us/gdcourts/criminalDetail.do?formAction=newSearch?ts=1723809893251&amp;clientSearchCounter=3&amp;localFipsCode=013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">records</a> show that he was previously arrested in Arlington on a felony offense in 2020 and <a href="https://eapps.courts.state.va.us/gdcourts/criminalDetail.do?formAction=newSearch?ts=1723810087775&amp;clientSearchCounter=3&amp;localFipsCode=013" target="_blank" rel="noopener">charged </a>with failure to appear in court in July 2020. He was arrested on that charge on July 13, 2024, before he was released on his own recognizance. 
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The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/08/14/trump-virginia-office-break-in-suspect-identified/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that in 2019, Kessler was charged with second-degree assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct in Maryland and had a loitering charge in Florida. He has also been charged with public intoxication and property damage in Virginia. 
In a statement on Wednesday, Virginia GOP Chairman Rich Anderson praised law enforcement over its handling of the case. 
“The Republican Party of Virginia is deeply grateful to Sheriff Mike Chapman and the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office for their rapid and professional handling of this investigation,” he said. “Their efforts are a reminder of how fortunate we all are to have the dedicated men and women of law enforcement serving our communities.”

MixCollage-16-Aug-2024-07-42-AM-8863

Man With Lengthy Criminal History Identified As Suspect Who Broke Into Trump Campaign Office

2024 Election

Crime

U.S. Politics

The “gender-fluid” Virginia teenager who raped a freshman girl in a girl’s bathroom while he was wearing a skirt was quietly released from a juvenile treatment center in November. On Wednesday, his 18th birthday, he was released from court supervision.
Because Buta Biberaj—Loudoun County&#8217;s since-defeated George Soros-backed prosecutor—charged him as a juvenile, he will have no public conviction on his record. He will not appear on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-rapist-removed-from-sex-offender-registry-after-county-board-member-says-hes-the-victim" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sex offender registry</a>, despite Judge Pamela Brooks saying at his January 2022 <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-loudoun-rapist-sentenced-put-on-sex-offender-registry-for-life">sentencing</a> that “Over the years this court has read many psychosexual reports, and when I read yours, frankly, it scared me. It scared me for you, it scared me for society.”
Now that the perpetrator is an adult, The Daily Wire is no longer withholding his name: Hunter Heckel.
In October 2021, The Daily Wire broke the news that the Loudoun County 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">concealed the rape</a> while it worked to pass a policy that would allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice. Administrators transferred Heckel to a different school, where he sexually assaulted another girl.
In between, then-Loudoun County Schools Superintendent Scott Ziegler accused parents who objected to the bathroom policy of transphobia and denied that any rape occurred in the school bathroom.
Scott Smith, the father of Heckel&#8217;s first victim, said Biberaj did not notify his family upon the rapist&#8217;s release in November. Biberaj lost to a Republican that same month.
Smith said after Heckel raped his daughter, Biberaj extended a plea deal for lesser charges, over his objections, that would have “made it seem like a minor thing.”
“They were trying to push through a BS plea bargain with no consequence. We were told there was nothing we could do about it,&#8221; Smith told The Daily Wire. &#8220;If he hadn’t [assaulted a second girl], they were going to push us off a cliff.&#8221;
Biberaj personally argued in court for Smith&#8211;the victim&#8217;s father&#8211;to be sentenced to jail for disorderly conduct after he became angry at the school board meeting at which Ziegler denied the existence of the rape. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R.) later <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrats-lash-out-at-youngkin-for-pardoning-father-of-loudoun-rape-victim" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pardoned</a> Smith for his disorderly conduct conviction, sending Biberaj into a fury.
The new Republican prosecutor, Bob Anderson, has since hired several people who stood up for the victims, including a lawyer who helped the Smith family navigate Heckler&#8217;s prosecution and another who worked for the state to prosecute former superintendent Ziegler.
Smith—who is suing Loudoun County Public Schools after its<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"> lawyers</a> acknowledged that it violated federal law designed to protect women—said Biberaj’s defeat at the ballot box was a bright spot in a trying time.
Smith said that he was told that Heckel has “completed his high school, he has a job, and he’s considering going to college.&#8221;
“He basically walked out of this scarless. Hunter got a new start yesterday. When do we get our new start?”

Loudoun rapist

Virginia’s Skirt-Wearing Rapist Was Released On His 18th Birthday. Now He’s Not Anonymous.

George Soros

Transgender

The Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) official hired to foster &#8220;transparency&#8221; and &#8220;family outreach&#8221; following its sordid scandals appears to be tied to a social media account that degraded and attacked parents and journalists, mocking the district&#8217;s sex-starved &#8220;middle-aged soccer mom[s]” and &#8220;white people,&#8221; and saying a journalist had a &#8220;little d&#8211;k.&#8221;
When Aaron Spence was named superintendent after the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/as-loudoun-superintendent-heads-to-criminal-sentencing-no-evidence-of-remorse-just-partisan-rage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criminal indictment</a> of his predecessor, Spence turned heads by bringing with him a lavishly-paid communications officer from his last job: Thirty-six-year-old Natalie Allen was given an annual salary of $251,000, plus special benefits, to serve as Chief Communications Officer of Loudoun schools.
Allen&#8217;s office has often ignored questions from reporters, including for this article. However, around the time that Allen was brought in to manage LCPS&#8217; reputation, assure parents that it was not partisan, and provide information to the public, an X account with the handle @kecknj began profanely attacking journalists, conservatives, and others who discussed negative information about LCPS.
The X account did not have a name displayed at the time, but a 2019 news article reveals that it used to have the name Nicholas Keckeisen. Property records show Allen owns a home with Nicholas Keckeisen; he is presumably her husband. That <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/school-board-president-apologizes-for-comparing-blonde-hair-to-racial-injustice-013628281.html">news article</a> showed the account attacking a school board member in Missouri, where Allen worked around that time, accusing the board member of “white fragility.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨 LCPS pays their Chief Communications Officer, Natalie Allen, a salary of 250k to “drive positive news coverage of LCPS and build meaningful relationship with families”.
Why is her husband, kecknj, attacking local news reporters and parents? Is he ensuring her job security? <a href="https://t.co/JlSGzHaWkr">pic.twitter.com/JlSGzHaWkr</a>
— LoudounCountyMoms (@LoudounMoms) <a href="https://twitter.com/LoudounMoms/status/1772782409915695306?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 27, 2024</a></blockquote>
The account (which Allen&#8217;s official X account follows) was imbued with partisan animus and mirrored the issues fixated on by Allen&#8217;s office, revealing contempt for normal taxpayers of America’s wealthiest county. The account called conservative parents “lying sacks of s&#8212;” and concerned moms a “little sewing group” of “middle-aged soccer mom[s]” who were angry because their pool boys would not have sex with them. “We’re trying to get those white people to stop being a—holes,” it said, adding that the state&#8217;s Republican governor supports rape.
The poster claimed to see a conservative parent “slipping schtick minock’s little d— down his throat behind the Arby’s last week” — using a disparaging nickname for the WJLA journalist Nick Minock, who has been targeted by Allen&#8217;s office — and said the school board views concerned parents as “fools to be kept off of Fox news with your childish antics.”
Allen, immediately after being hired, steered $27,000 to a nonprofit that had previously given her an award — the nonprofit went on to write a report that was used as justification for shocking steps to silence critics of Spence, demonize watchdogs, and turn the school system into &#8220;misinformation&#8221; police, a Daily Wire review shows. That includes a move to ban elected school board members —Spence&#8217;s bosses — from communicating with their own constituents, in favor of all information coming through Allen&#8217;s office.
The &#8220;communications audit&#8221; purchased from the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) is cited as the basis for LCPS asking the federal government last month to punish a local news station for its Emmy-winning coverage of LCPS, with Allen&#8217;s subordinate writing to the Federal Communications Commission that an ABC affiliate&#8217;s coverage &#8220;will continue unabated without some kind of external action.&#8221;
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-asks-feds-to-censor-local-outlet-for-bullying-it-by-reporting-on-its-corruption" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FCC complaint</a> even argued that the station should not be allowed to use the tagline “Crisis in the Classroom” for its editorial products on education because the “communications audit” said people would prefer “good news” stories.
NSPRA gave Allen an award in 2020, as well as honored her in 2016, a year in which she worked for Baltimore County Public Schools superintendent Dallas Dance, who was sentenced to <a href="https://www.wypr.org/wypr-news/2019-05-30/dallas-dance-talks-about-baltimore-county-schools-and-his-new-life" target="_blank" rel="noopener">prison for perjury</a> in 2018.
Its audit was also cited as justification for a broader attack by Allen’s office on the media, including a new website called “<a href="https://www.lcps.org/Page/254751" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Correcting Misinformation and Disinformation</a>” that faults the media for harming “the school division’s efforts to rebuild trust.” The website says Allen&#8217;s office will &#8220;notify students, families, staff and the community when misinformation or disinformation is occurring.”
The <a href="https://issuu.com/lcpspio/docs/audit_report_loudoun_2024_final" target="_blank" rel="noopener">audit proposed</a> to “Eliminate the release of board member-specific newsletters. Currently, some board members send newsletters to their district constituents and some do not&#8230; Stakeholders are simply receiving too much information from too many sources. Eliminating these newsletters would be responsive to that stakeholder feedback, and instead relying on school board information produced and distributed by the Department of Communications and Community Engagement would help ensure messages are accurate.”
That would amount to a near-coup, as the superintendent works for school board members, rather than the other way around. In recent weeks, a Republican school board member was also hauled into a secret meeting where she faced the threat of <a href="https://www.loudounnow.com/news/after-school-board-closed-session-no-formal-action-taken-against-griffiths/article_41205c62-2d12-11ef-b181-6f22226c535c.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discipline</a> after she said she voted against giving Spence a $20,000 bonus, while a policy was proposed prohibiting school board aides from criticizing the district <a href="https://wjla.com/news/local/loudoun-county-school-board-policy-restrict-staff-criticism-lcps-publicly-privately-public-comment-meeting-bathroom-locker-room-policies-children-students-athletic-gender-sex" target="_blank" rel="noopener">even privately</a>, after an aide said her daughter did not like being forced to share a locker room with a boy.
A review of NSPRA audits conducted for other school systems suggests that the primary value of the document to Allen was precisely to <a href="https://www.lcps.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&amp;ModuleInstanceID=378090&amp;ViewID=7b97f7ed-8e5e-4120-848f-a8b4987d588f&amp;RenderLoc=0&amp;FlexDataID=479961&amp;PageID=254573" target="_blank" rel="noopener">justify such moves</a> while hiding behind a third party. NSPRA has sold custom audits to more than a dozen school systems, but they included identical assessments and language, despite those districts being wildly different.
For example, NSPRA claimed that at individual “focus groups” at <a href="https://www.paulding.k12.ga.us/cms/lib/GA01903603/Centricity/Domain/238/Audit-Report-Paulding-23-final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pauling County</a> schools in Georgia, <a href="https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1694117375/apsborg/aimayhybjf6u2a5qfci4/Audit_Report_Ascension-202309-FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ascension Public Schools</a> in Louisiana, and <a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/mo/lsr7sd/Board.nsf/files/CZCTYT7641F4/$file/Audit%20Report%20LSR7%202023%20FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lee’s Summit</a> in Missouri, participants at each made the exact same remarks. Those remarks, it said, led it to recommend that each district “Develop and execute a plan to combat misinformation and disinformation.”
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-754255" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/nspra.jpg" alt="" width="906" height="1021" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/nspra.jpg 906w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/nspra-266x300.jpg 266w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/nspra-511x576.jpg 511w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/06/nspra-768x865.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 906px) 100vw, 906px" /></div>
The FCC complaint against ABC affiliate WJLA shows that Allen&#8217;s office is fixated on its reporter Nick Minock and his stories on Spence, particularly Spence&#8217;s coverup of the fact that nine students from one high school overdosed on fentanyl. (Spence falsely claimed that privacy laws prevented him from even saying the name of the school, drawing bipartisan rebuke.)
The X account was also used to monitor and attack parents who unearthed facts about the school system — parents like Erin Smith, who was the first to notice the account&#8217;s link to Allen as well as the copy-and-paste content in the NSPRA&#8217;s &#8220;audits.&#8221;  When one such parent commented that Minock&#8217;s reporting on the overdose coverup had led Virginia lawmakers to pass a bipartisan law forcing districts to disclose overdoses, the account wrote, “Don’t thank that f—ing shill. He’s hired help pushing forward the ultranationalist agenda. Vile human being.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The NSPRA audit has large copy and paste paragraphs from other school district audits, many with half the student body size but with exact same recommendations.
The audit that sparked this new account IS the misinformation. 
➡️ <a href="https://t.co/xxKzhkySbs">https://t.co/xxKzhkySbs</a> <a href="https://t.co/PTw0k1plIA">https://t.co/PTw0k1plIA</a>
— LoudounCountyMoms (@LoudounMoms) <a href="https://twitter.com/LoudounMoms/status/1803954642134417746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2024</a></blockquote>
The National School Public Relations Association, despite being geared at communicating with the media, did not return a request for comment on the duplicated language in its $27,000 &#8220;disinformation&#8221; PDFs; whether Loudoun&#8217;s attempts to get the federal government to punish a TV station were in line with the practices suggested by its audit; whether it was appropriate to recommend that a superintendent tell school board members not to email their constituents; and whether the social media posts were in line with its recommended practices.

Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent Aaron Spence and communications chief Natalie Allen (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images / LinkedIn)

Loudoun Schools’ Public Relations Honcho Linked To Anonymous Social Media Attacks On Journalist, Parents: “Little D–k” “White People”

Misinformation

Loudoun County Public Schools filed a bizarre complaint with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) asking the federal agency to punish the D.C. market’s ABC affiliate for its coverage of the district’s corruption, calling the reporting “misinformation and disinformation” that amounted to &#8220;bullying and harassing behavior.”
For 35 pages, the manifesto by LCPS spokesman Dan Adams tattled to the government that journalists had not characterized things the way he instructed them to—for example, Nick Minock, WJLA&#8217;s lead Loudoun reporter, said that the school superintendant had missed a month of school (20 workdays) traveling on junkets, when Adams said it was 19.5 days.
&#8220;LCPS is forced to ask itself, ‘what recourse remains?’ WJLA has demonstrated through its actions and failure to communicate that their behavior will continue unabated without some kind of external action,” the <a href="https://www.lcps.org/cms/lib/VA01000195/Centricity/Domain/35696/WJLA%20Media%20Distortion%20Complaint.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FCC complaint</a> said.
“We do not take this action lightly, as we work tirelessly to have positive and collaborative relationships with our media partners. But at this time, we can no longer stand by while WJLA and its staff consistently provide misinformation and disinformation to our community,” LCPS wrote.
The censorship attempt comes as Superintendent Aaron Spence embarks on an unprecedented spree of stifling dissent and hiding problems.
A Republican school board member, Deana Griffiths, also faced a closed-door attempt to formally discipline her last week <a href="https://www.loudounnow.com/news/after-school-board-closed-session-no-formal-action-taken-against-griffiths/article_41205c62-2d12-11ef-b181-6f22226c535c.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">for offering mild criticism of Spence</a>, and revealing that she declined to vote in favor of giving him a bonus of more than $20,000.
Adams included a chart in his complaint to demonstrate WJLA had a “disproportionate focus” on Loudoun schools, a plea for the government to punish a private media station for choosing what topics to focus on.
Shortly after the complaint was sent, Minock won <a href="https://twitter.com/NickMinock/status/1804874998630199601">three Emmy awards</a> for his Loudoun reporting, celebrating its widely-recognized accuracy and importance to the public interest.
The complaint nitpicked reporting such as how after LCPS spent $11 million adding non-gendered bathrooms to its schools —after <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">covering up a rape</a> by a boy in the girls bathroom — Minock reported that the goal was to accommodate transgender students; Adams claimed that was “misinformation” because non-transgender students would also be allowed to use the new restrooms.
Recently, Loudoun’s sheriff was forced to go public after Spence concealed the fact that there had been nine fentanyl overdoses by students of a single school, with Spence falsely claiming that even saying the name of the schools where it occurred would violate privacy laws.
Adams complained to the FCC that WJLA should not have been allowed to report that it concealed the overdoses, because in one case the school disclosed that “a student experienced a medical emergency,” without saying what it was. Adams said Minock “disrupted [a] public meeting” by asking the superintendent about the topic. In response to bipartisan condemnation of the secrecy, the Virginia legislature later passed a bill requiring schools to notify parents of overdoses — a bill LCPS hired a lobbyist to try to modify.
Virginia state senator Glen Sturtevant, a Republican, <a href="https://twitter.com/GlenSturtevant/status/1804235516424122409">called</a> for a “temporary state takeover” of LCPS in response to Adams&#8217; screed, saying that “trying to silence a free press” that had reported on its problems shows that it is “totally out of control.”
Adams is also in charge of Freedom of Information Act requests and has repeatedly violated the law, for which The Daily Wire <a class="c-link" href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-sues-loudoun-schools-for-misusing-privacy-protections-to-hide-wrongdoing" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/news/daily-wire-sues-loudoun-schools-for-misusing-privacy-protections-to-hide-wrongdoing" data-sk="tooltip_parent">sued him</a> and LCPS.

A tally counter showing a 1984 number / 	Wachiwit / Getty Images

Loudoun Asks Feds To Censor Local Outlet For ‘Bullying’ It By Reporting On Its Corruption

Censorship

Schoolboy greets father after first day

‘A Political Juggernaut’: Corey DeAngelis On The Power Of Parents Standing Up To School Boards

Books

COVID

High School

Parenting

Readers Pass

School Boards

School Lockdowns

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.

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

Sexual Assault

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

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