Via Talk Business, Democratic attorney general candidate Nate Steel commented tonight on the latest Leslie Rutledge controversy, involving an offensive email which Rutledge forwarded to others (Rutledge herself acknowledges that she forwarded the email).

Steel did not speak directly about the offensive email, but said Rutledge should release her DHS personnel file (a small number of the DHS emails have not been released; emails pertaining to a record of her job performance by supervisors are protected from release under the Freedom of Information Act, but Rutledge could choose to have them released herself).

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Here’s Steel’s statement:

I will leave it to others to investigate the veracity of these emails, but I do know that the only reason they are at issue is due to Ms. Rutledge’s refusal to release her DHS personnel file. Doing so would either explain the ‘gross misconduct’ reported on earlier or expose an unfair attack against her as she has suggested.

My record is wide open – thousands of legislative votes and hundreds of felony cases that I prosecuted have been combed through. I understand that this is a part of the process. No matter who the alleged author of this email is, Ms. Rutledge and I, as candidates for Attorney General, should be held to a higher standard.

UPDATE NOTE FROM MAX: Steel is right. More important than Leslie Rutledge e-mails are papers within DHS by supervisors that bear on Rutledge’s job performance. Somewhere in the files — but exempt from FOI — are documents that provide more insight on events that led to her “do not rehire” label. She won’t allow these to be released. She claims fear of politics. But remember that that these were papers compiled years ago when Leslie Rutledge was an unknown, with no political plans. They could show finally whether there was an understandable ground for the low opinion held of her work. We already know from a limited release that she screwed up a couple of cases.

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