Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor had a confirmation hearing before the House Judiciary Committee Monday. During the hearing, he fielded questions that included the previous attorneys general who both resigned, victims coming forward, Governor Mike Dunleavy’s former Chief of Staff Ben Stevens, accountability and transparency.
In speaking to the House Judiciary Committee, Taylor said, “I promise to keep learning. I also promise to hold employees of the Department of Law responsible for any of the actions that they take that is contrary to that, especially in circumstances where we’re talking about harassment, creating workplaces that they are unsafe or feel unsafe to the individual. I do promise to take those issues very seriously and have taken those issues very seriously throughout my career. I’ve had opportunities to address some of those issues and we’ve always taken swift action after an investigation. The caveat that everybody is innocent till proven guilty.”
House Judiciary Committee Chair, Rep. Matt Claman, expressed issue with the fact that Alaska took bad positions in a number of cases. “There have been a series of cases. There’s really no other way to describe them but that the department has been losing almost every single one. Either the governor’s getting bad advice or the governor is getting advice that these cases are unlikely to succeed and the governor is going forward with them anyway, both of which strike me as a fairly poor decisions on the governor’s part. I’m just troubled that this number of cases is going forward and losing on things that they seem like political positions, but legally they’re very, very poor positions to take. My fairly direct question is how do you expect to change that because if you were to ask me what is the single most important job if your to succeed as attorney general, it is to convince this governor to stop taking poor cases.”
Taylor was appointed by Governor Mike Dunleavy as Attorney General earlier this year to replace Ed Sniffen. Taylor has served with the Alaska Department of Law since 2018, serving as Deputy Attorney General in charge of the Civil Division. Not too long after that, Taylor was ordered to investigate allegations of sexual misconduct involving his predecessor. Due to time constraints, the committee was unable to finish the confirmation hearing.
Transcribed audio courtesy of KTOO 360TV