Ryan Crosswell’s actual valor
I got a chance to meet Congressional candidate Ryan Crosswell a couple weeks ago at a reception in Williams Township.
I didn’t really want to meet someone new, but a friend of mine led me over and introduced us. (I find these kind of political receptions awkward, and I never feel like I fit in.)
Photo credit: Ryancrosswell.com
Of all the candidates who may face Republican Ryan Mackenzie in vying for former Rep. Susan Wild’s old seat this November, I am absolutely certain that Crosswell is the one Republicans fear most.
Crosswell is Mr. Clean. And he has some outrageous beliefs, including the old-fashioned notion that when public officials violate the public trust, they should face prosecution. Remember that crazy idea?
Since Trumpism is almost defined by its corruption, no other candidate seems better equipped to bring these bad actors to account.
This former prosecutor in the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department most famously refused, under pressure from Trump’s minions, to drop the corruption case against former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and instead resigned.
Adams had become an important political ally of President Donald Trump, and Trump evidently wanted a puppet mayor to carry out his harsh immigration remit in New York. Dropping the case against Adams for his sickening alleged violations of the public trust would be a way to further that agenda.
It’s turned out that Trump’s abuse of the Justice Department as a tool of personal and political retribution was just getting started.
I remember Crosswell and his colleagues’ resignations in the news, but they were sadly among many examples of incredibly brilliant professionals in public service who, when forced to choose between a deal with the devil, so to speak, or serving the Constitution, picked the latter.
To see Crosswell pilloried by opponents in the campaign for the 7th Pennsylvania Congressional District as “tool for corporate greed” or a “union buster”—he once worked as a corporate lawyer—speaks to opponents’ fears of facing someone who has actually taken Trump’s corruption to the mat and not flinched.
How soon we forget the glowing profiles and liberal adulation of Crosswell last year in the wake of his resignation.
Yes, Crosswell may have done corporate law early in his career, but he made a reputation for hunting down corrupt public officials and seeing them prosecuted. We could used some of that. There is something rotten in the state of the Denmark, after all.