The Daily Beast
South Dakota AG may have read right-wing conspiracies Biden while killing a man with his car
South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg acknowledged during his interviews with police investigators last year that he was reading political articles – including a conspiracy theory article about Joe Biden – on his phone just before he hit and killed a pedestrian with his car . he currently faces three counts of misdemeanor, appeals from Governor Kristi Noem to resign and impeachment lawsuit for killing Joseph Boever, 55, on the side of a highway last year. Ravnsborg, returning from a political dinner on September 12, initially told the police after striking Boever that he thought he had hit a deer and ended up leaving the scene of the incident. The next morning, however, Boever’s body was found. In videos released this week, interrogators can be seen informing the attorney general last September that Boever’s glasses were found inside his vehicle, revealing that “the victim’s face came out through the windshield”, contradicting Ravnsborg’s allegations of that he didn’t know he had hit a man until the next day. The newly released videos also show investigators examining the lead attorney’s phone records and revealing that Ravnsborg was scouring websites while driving at night, choosing a particular article shortly before he arrived at Boever. “At 10:20:49, you were on the Dakota Free Press website,” an investigator told the attorney general in a clip initially flagged by Media Matters researcher Timothy Johnson. “They’re all on your business phone. A minute later, you were on the RealClearPolitics website. South Dakota AG Jason Ravnsborg was reading Joe Biden’s conspiracy theories on John Solomon’s Just The News website while driving when he crashed into a man, killing and hitting him so hard that the man’s face came through of the windshield. (Ravnsborg said he thought he hit a deer) pic.twitter.com/Lz9dWb7SBa— Timothy Johnson (@timothywjohnson) February 26, 2021 “And then, about a minute later, this article was pulled into Just The News,” o The interrogator continued, referring to the website founded by pro-Trump columnist John Solomon. The investigator, however, went on to note that the article in question was “about Joe Biden and something to do with China” and that Ravnsborg was on that link until a minute before the accident, asking the attorney general if he remembered having read this while driving. Ravnsborg said he remembered “looking at them”, but then “put the phone down”, leading the investigator to point out that this activity was on. His phone occurred just a minute or more before calling 911 to report the accident. “So the concern is that before the moment of impact, there was a period of time that passed before you called 911,” said the investigator. “You had to figure out what was going on, stop, get your bearings, go out and look at the damage a little, find out what the hell is going on, find out where you are, call 911. ”“ So it is reasonable to say that a minute or two passed from the impact until you were on the phone with the 911, right? That would be reasonable, ”concluded the interrogator. The article in question, however, appears to have been an essay by Just The News of a right-wing documentary claiming that then-nominated Biden and his family had a long history of self-enrichment in China. During the final months of the 2020 election, President Donald Trump and his media allies tried to make the controversies surrounding Biden’s son Hunter a focal point of the campaign. The interrogators continued to interrogate Ravnsborg in his use of the telephone during the time of the fatal collision. Although the attorney general insisted that he “did not remember reading the article” and that he believed he hung up the phone before hitting Boever, authorities expanded the content of the article in more detail and showed that he clicked on the link. “It’s about a conspiracy with Joe Biden in China,” noted an investigator. “I think I would say that I read the headlines a lot. I don’t read articles while I’m driving, “replied Ravnsborg, adding,” I’ve never heard of Just the News. ” Fox News shows how John Solomon, architect of Trump’s conspiracies in Ukraine. Solomon, however, has been a major player in the pro-Trump media ecosystem for years. After a long journalistic career that included stops at The Washington Times, Newsweek / The Daily Beast and Washington Post, Solomon became the “investigative reporter” for Fox News presenter Sean Hannity, who has repeatedly extended Solomon’s questionable reports on the subject. called a “deep state” liberal conspiracy against Trump. After his work was beaten with the “opinion” tag following newsroom complaints during his time at The Hill, Solomon eventually branched out on his own, founding the right-wing website Just The News in late 2019. He was also scrutinized during the Trump’s first impeachment hearing, when it was revealed that he had been in frequent contact with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Giuliani’s Ukrainian associates. Hill’s editor-in-chief announced that Solomon’s columns on Ukraine, which helped fuel Giuliani’s Ukrainian earth-digging efforts in Biden, would be analyzed. Solomon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story. Read more in the Beast of the day. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.