The state of Alaska says it’s looking into a report in the Guardian newspaper that an assistant attorney general ran a Twitter account with a history of promoting racist and antisemitic ideas and is a member of a right-wing religious organization.
In an email, Assistant Attorney General Grace Lee said because the matter involves personnel issues, the Alaska Department of Law is limited in its ability to comment further.
“Having just learned about this late last week, we are gathering information and conducting a review,” Lee said.
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On Wednesday, the Guardian, a U.K.-based news organization, published an article reporting Assistant Attorney General Matthias Cicotte ran a Twitter account under the pseudonym J Reuben Clark that has espoused racist and anti-Semitic views and called for vigilante violence against left-wing groups.
Spokesman for Gov. Mike Dunleavy Jeff Turner referred the Empire to the Department of Law for comment.
Deputy AG Cori Mills told the Guardian, the department of law takes the allegations seriously.
“We uphold the dignity and respect of all individuals and ask that all of our employees do the same,” Mills told the Guardian.
The Guardian also reported Cicotte was a supporter of the Desert nationalists, a group the paper describes as a “Mormon-derived extremist group.”
According to the Guardian, “evidence from his Twitter output allowed Cicotte to be identified by anti-fascist researchers, whose evidence was confirmed and augmented by a Guardian investigation.”
• Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnuEmpire.
