Governing and law enforcement would be a lot simpler if investigators would just ask accused people if they were guilty and, when they said they weren’t, close the case.
That’s roughly what Utah Gov. Spencer Cox appears to have done — twice — when his administration received complaints about the then-head of the Utah National Guard, Maj. Gen. Michael Turley.
The governor’s office and his human resources people received multiple complaints from within the Guard that Turley was mishandling cases of sexual harassment and inappropriate relationships between officers and lower-ranking personnel and that he had made violent threats against Guard members.
The governor’s response? Ask Turley if anything was wrong and urge him to reach out to Guard staff and corps for their feedback. And that was that. In 2021 and again in 2022.
Finally the Pentagon stepped in. The Department of the Army Inspector General launched its own investigation, which, in 2023, found the charges to be credible and reasoned that Turley might have been excessively lenient with others because he was also accused of an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.
Turley then retired. He has denied all the accusations against him.
We know all this only because the indefatigable journalists of The Salt Lake Tribune pushed for months for the information through Utah’s Government Records and Management Act and won the support of the State Records Committee.
The governor’s team argues that the allegations against the general were mostly anonymous, not leaving them much of a case to investigate.
Maybe. But that didn’t stop the Army IG from doing the job Cox should have done, not allowing the accused to lead the investigation into his own conduct.
It’s another example of the Utah Way. See a problem, do nothing and wait for the federal government to step in and clean up the mess.
