3 attorney general candidates have had run-ins with the law

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — All three candidates for the top law enforcement job in Vermont have had brushes with the law ranging from a disorderly conduct arrest to serving time in prison for fleecing financial clients.

Janssen Willhoit, the Republican candidate for attorney general, who is a defense attorney and legislator, served five years in prison in Kentucky for stealing more than $100,000 from financial clients.

“I had committed a horrible sin and I had hurt people that took it on me to handle their investments and that was completely wrong and horrible,” the 39-year-old said Wednesday. The time in prison was “hell” but transformed his life and inspired him to help other inmates and work for criminal justice reform, he said.

Willhoit’s prison term, however, isn’t enough for his hometown paper, the Caledonian Record, who recently panned his run as “patently absurd.” The Caledonian Record wrote that he is soft on crime and never paid back his victims.

“When Willhoit decided to steal another person’s life-savings, later opting not to pay any of it back, we feel strongly that he disqualified himself from serving as our state’s highest ranking law-enforcement officer,” the Caledonian Record wrote in an Oct. 3 editorial.

Willhoit responded in a letter to the editor. He said that he served his time and tried to get probation “to pay back what had been lost” but the victims said no, and wanted him “to rot.” At that time his life changed and he started to help others, by teaching inmates to read and tutoring inmates seeking the equivalent of a high school diploma, he wrote.

“I am far from a perfect person, but as your Attorney General I will fight for you, all of you, just as fervently as I stand for and protect those I have been called to serve as a legislator, defender, and foster parent,” he wrote.

Sen. Joe Benning, a fellow Republican legislator and lawyer in Caledonia County, said Willhoit is competent, but “has an uphill battle in facing off against an entrenched incumbent.”

That incumbent is Attorney General TJ Donovan, a Democrat, and former county prosecutor, who is seeking his second term. Donovan learned a lesson when he was a teen that he said he has not forgotten as he works for reforms to the criminal justice system.

He got into a fight and was charged with assault, the weekly newspaper Seven Days reported. He was put on probation and the charge was later expunged.

“I would say it was a wake-up call, but I think the lesson is people make mistakes, people necessarily shouldn’t be defined by one of the worst moments and that I believe in second chances,” he said Wednesday.

That’s why I’ve worked hard to reform our criminal justice system to create a public health system that deals with the issues of addiction, that deals with the issues of mental illness. That’s why I advocated for expanding our expungement law because a job is the best form of public safety and I believe in expungement. And that’s why I worked and advocated to reform our public bail system because being poor is not a crime.”

Unlike the other two candidates, perennial candidate Rosemarie Jackowski, 81, of the Liberty Union party said she’s proud of her brush with the law. She was arrested during a peaceful Iraq war protest in 2003 in Bennington and charged with disorderly conduct.

“It makes me smile that all three candidates have an interesting legal history,” she said.