Nevada’s top cop is sprinting for the governor’s mansion — and sprinting away from the one question he can’t answer. Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford personally sponsored the clemency application of a man convicted of killing a pregnant woman, then dodged every attempt to explain why, Fox News reports.
State records show Ford was the sole sponsor of Norman Smith’s commutation application at a September 16 Board of Pardons hearing — the only clemency bid Ford elevated all year. Smith is serving a 10-to-39-year sentence for killing Tineshea Adams, a pregnant woman, in a Las Vegas convenience-store parking lot in 2015. At the time of the murder, Smith was already out on bail facing fourteen charges in connection with a series of armed robbery attacks on Vegas Strip tourists. He was initially charged with murder but ultimately convicted of voluntary manslaughter and three counts of armed robbery.
The board denied the clemency bid. Ford skipped the hearing entirely, citing an out-of-state family medical emergency. But when a conservative tracker caught up with the gubernatorial candidate at a Las Vegas airport the same day, Ford’s response was pure deflection. “Uhh, don’t know which one you’re talking about, but anyway — good to see you,” Ford said before shuffling away. Pressed again on why he was sponsoring a killer’s release, Ford offered only: “Good to see you. Take care.”
Let that sink in. The state’s highest-ranking law enforcement officer hand-picked this one case out of the entire clemency queue — a man who murdered a pregnant woman while out on bail for terrorizing tourists — and couldn’t muster a single sentence explaining why. Republican strategist Matt Gorman put it best: “Aaron Ford was moving faster through that airport than the violent criminals he’s trying to put back on the street.”
Ford’s campaign insists sponsoring a commutation is merely a “routine procedural step,” but repeatedly refused to explain why Ford chose to elevate Smith’s case specifically. Ford is running for governor against Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo, who has hammered the attorney general’s record on public safety — and this episode hands Lombardo the kind of ammunition money can’t buy.
This is a window into what happens when political ambition overrides basic accountability. A Democrat attorney general who wants to run the state can’t even face a camera and justify his decision to push for the release of a convicted killer. If he won’t answer for it now, voters should ask themselves what he’ll refuse to answer for as governor.
Source: foxnews.com