Briggs: Todd Rokita is over being attorney general

It looks increasingly likely that Republican Todd Rokita is in his final days as attorney general. He's over the job and doesn't care who knows.

Rokita is quiet quitting — err, noisy quitting — before our eyes. He's exhibiting behavior so careless, so reckless, so dumb — and he's not a dumb person — that it must be calculated.

Here's the calculation, as I see it: The job has nothing left to offer him, so Rokita is attempting to go out in a blaze of indignity, a martyr for MAGA, in hopes of lining up new and better opportunities on the other side.

That's the most logical explanation for why he's railing against the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission, which holds his law license — and, thus, his job — in its hands. The same body that suspended Curtis Hill's law license after determining he groped women as attorney general could take even more consequential action against Rokita.

More and more, Rokita's words and actions seem to say: Do it.

Rokita wrote in a Jan. 3 legal filing that the commission needs to be "cordoned-off from the political stage," as if its members are puppets on strings controlled by the libs.

Then, on Monday, Rokita went on the radio to Tony Katz's WIBC show and pushed back on the court's insistence that he flouted its authority, saying, "If anyone’s impeding the integrity of the court, it’s the news media, it’s political opponents who want this story to never end."

Ah, yes, "this story."

Rokita's flirtation with disbarment began in July 2022 when he went on Fox News and took the horrific story of a 10-year-old rape victim who became pregnant as an opportunity to mug for the cameras and raise his clout on national TV.

Rokita, with an armory of bluster and a bare cupboard of facts, suggested Dr. Caitlin Bernard committed crimes as the obstetrician-gynecologist who performed an abortion in that case. Rokita called Bernard an “abortion activist acting as a doctor — with a history of failing to report.”

More James Briggs: Todd Rokita went on Fox News and bared his vacant soul

The Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission determined that Rokita's amateur cable news punditry violated two rules of professional conduct and it reprimanded him in November. Rather than accepting his slap on the wrist and moving on, though, Rokita issued a defiant statement insisting his words expressed on Fox News "are factual."

Now, the Supreme Court panel is taking another look at the matter as Rokita eggs on the justices.

It's been clear since before Rokita took office that he didn't care about the primary functions of being Indiana attorney general. Despite his 2020 message that he was running to restore professionalism to the office in the wake of Hill's groping scandal — "I'm doing this out of a labor of love," he told me then — Rokita has gone into business for himself, using his staff and resources to promote his political self-interests.

In that sense, attorney general is a pretty good gig. So, why would he want to give it up?

I sent an email to Rokita's office asking if he's intentionally trying to lose his law license and I didn't hear back. Although I don't profess to be inside his head, I have some educated guesses as to what he might be thinking.

More James Briggs: Todd Rokita will never be governor (or senator)

Rokita viewed the attorney general job as a launching pad to get back in the mix for either another U.S. Senate run or a bid for governor. No lane opened up in either direction for a charmless Trump imitator, though, and now Rokita is staring at a future in which other Republicans likely will lock down those jobs for many years to come.

Rokita is wobbling on a stepping stone to nowhere. He could simply sit out re-election this year, of course, but then there'd be no spotlight to follow him out of office.

Rokita might find advantages to getting kicked out — over a "perfect" Fox News hit, he might say. Rokita could frame his ouster as a matter of The Establishment, beholden to the left, retaliating against a champion of freedom who stood up for conservative values.

With a story like that, Rokita could spin a path to a second Trump administration, a rebranded run for future office or find some other way to cash in on his shamelessness. In the meantime, he could return to a high-paying, opaque policy advisor role in the private sector and make more money than he can in his high-level state job.

No matter what, Rokita is virtually guaranteed to win by losing.

Rokita's job in public service has ceased to serve him. His final insult to the voters who hired him could be to pretend he's the victim as he slinks away to whatever's next.

Contact James Briggs at 317-444-4732 or [email protected]. Follow him on X and Threads.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Todd Rokita is over being Indiana attorney general