Attorney general vows fair Cornell probe, hires outside lawyer to be fair for her

…(cont) Now here's the part I need the office's help with. Before that camera was rolling, she had already made comments about the case — prejudicial comments, the reporting says, and nobody at the office told me that reporting was wrong when I asked. So I called back and asked which came first, the comments or the promise to be fair about the thing she'd already commented on. The fellow said he'd have to check and get back to me. He has not gotten back to me.

This is the kind of question I'd think the professionals would have an answer ready for, which is why I went to them instead of guessing myself. They're the state's chief law enforcement office. Sorting out who's been fair and who hasn't is the whole job. I don't do that for a living — I spend my Saturdays under the hood of a car that needs a fan belt I keep meaning to replace — but they do, every day, for a living.

So this week the Post is reporting the office is going to bring in outside counsel to investigate the seven Cornell students. Not the Attorney General's own people finishing the job she said she'd do — somebody hired in from outside, to do the part she'd already promised the cameras was hers to do. I called a third time and asked why you'd need to pay somebody else to keep a promise you made yourself. The fellow said that wasn't really a question for him. I believe he's right about that. I don't think it's a question for whoever answers the phone.

I think about the corner store down the block from me. If a customer says the scale's reading wrong, the owner doesn't go hire a second man with a second scale to stand there and confirm it while the first scale sits on the counter. Either the scale's right or it isn't, and if it isn't, you fix the scale or you explain what happened to it. I asked the office if that was a fair way to think about what they're doing and the man said he'd note my concern. I wrote that down too: "noted my concern."

I was about ready to leave it there and send this in — until I saw the other thing sitting under everything else on my page, and I want to ask you about it before you go, because I only just noticed it myself. No reason given in anything I've got written down. Just the ask.

I don't have an opinion on that one, and I wouldn't know where to start forming one even if I did. But I'd like to know this, and I think it's a fair question for the office, since fairness is their whole department: the investigation she promised on camera, and the investigation the outside lawyer is now being paid to run — is that one investigation, or two? Because if it's one, I'd like to know why it needed a second man to finish what the first one already swore was fair. And if it's two, I'd like to know who's running the one she promised.

I wrote the question down exactly like that and I'm sending it to the office in the morning. If they get back to me, you'll be the first to know. So far, on this one, nobody has.