State lawyer who posted racist comments no longer on the job

JUNEAU (AP) - An assistant state attorney general identified by a news outlet as the person behind a social media account that posted racist and antisemitic comments no longer works for the state Department of Law, an agency spokesperson said.

Grace Lee said that Matthias Cicotte’s last day with the department was July 27. She declined to say if he resigned or fired.

The department last week said it had assigned Cicotte’s cases to other employees while it investigated the matter.

Attorney General Treg Taylor, in a statement, cited confidentiality provisions around personnel records as a reason “we cannot provide further information on the investigation that occurred.”

Cicotte did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Cicotte had worked as an assistant attorney since 2012.

The Guardian newspaper earlier this month identified Cicotte as posting racist and antisemitic material under a pseudonym on Twitter. The outlet said it had identified him using evidence provided by “anti-fascist researchers” and its own investigation.

“Since-deleted tweets archived by anti-fascists reveal that he advocated various extreme positions including the summary imprisonment of Black Lives Matter protesters; vigilante violence against leftwing groups;” and the execution of people who perform gender reassignment surgery, the newspaper reported.

Cicotte had been working on cases involving the Alaska Department of Corrections.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations had called for Cicotte’s firing. In a statement July 28, Robert McCaw, the group’s government affairs director, urged Alaska’s attorney general to review any case Cicotte worked on “that involved racial or religious discrimination to ensure that the case was handled properly. We welcome the fact that an individual who apparently espouses bigoted views will no longer be administering justice in Alaska.”

 

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