By Steven T. Jones
Former U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan — who now heads Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Office of Criminal Justice and has steered the mayor toward more conservative positions on issues ranging from police accountability to the city’s sanctuary policy and plan to issue resident identification cards — was the subject of scathing criticism in a new Justice Department report that examined the Bush Administration’s controversial firing of several U.S. attorneys.
Unlike other attorneys who were fired for political reasons, Ryan was a Bush loyalist and self-described Republican “company man” fired for being “retaliatory, explosive, noncommunicative, and paranoid,” the report said. That was no surprise to us at the Guardian, who have written critically about Ryan before and fail to understand why Newsom hired him, particularly given what an incompetent toadie for a discredited administration he was.
Everyone but Newsom and those in his bunker seem to understand how disgraceful it is for San Francisco to be harboring a right-wing political fugitive like Ryan, let alone giving him a position of great influence. Newsom flak Nate Ballard amazingly told the Chronicle Ryan was “a man of unimpeachable integrity,” all evidence to the contrary.
“What is Nathan Ballard thinking, saying he’s a man of integrity and everything. Well, Hitler could paint,” Sup. Tom Ammiano, who has had to wrestle with Newsom’s Ryan-inspired policy flips on issues important to the Mission District, told us. Yet Ammiano noted that both the Chronicle and even the more conservative Examiner are highlighting the report blasting Ryan as the one U.S. attorney who deserved to be fired.
“In the long run, hopefully dissatisfaction with Ryan will grow,” Ammiano said. “He could become a liability for [Newsom], and only then Newsom fire him because that’s how he operates.”