INDIANA ATTORNEY GENERAL SHOULD INVESTIGATE THE RUSH-DANIELS TIMELINE

Indiana Attorney General, Coach Cig Says, "Attack. Always Attack."

Chief Justice Loretta Rush's own Purdue remarks raise questions about two consequential 2012 appointments—and Hoosiers deserve the complete story

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has been shredded by the Rush's high court court gestapo, also know as "the commission: and but for a motion to inverene is last DI case, he'd still be under her thumb. Well it's high time he take a page for IU football coach Curt Cignetti featured Sunday evening on 60 minutes. Coach Cig ended his national interview by say, "and always attack."

It is high time the Attorney General attack. He sent a letter recently but that was hardly an attack. When he was attacked he had no friends and so, he owes nobody anything. He needs clean her clock. Her time is up after admitting she never met Daniels "until she interviewed him." How did a dump small county juvinille justice court judge with little experience outside her little county get appointed to the Supreme Court?

Sure, Daniels from the time he was advising Lugar on federal judicial nomations had always thought the third branch of government, the courts and judges should not be smart people. He even said, "I don't appiont smart people the bench." Well, he didn't when he appointed her and so many others around the state--most of whom have retired and took their state pensions on day one or eligibility. Daniels is responsible of Rush and Indiana being number 47 out of 50 state in access to justice. She can't be seriously allowed to serve any longer.

Now he should use his subpeoana power and right to have only the truth stated, begin an extensive examine the circumstances surrounding former Gov. Mitch Daniels' 2012 appointment of Loretta Rush to the Indiana Supreme Court and determine whether there is evidence of an improper understanding connecting Rush's involvement in Purdue University's presidential-selection process with her subsequent appointment to Indiana's highest court.

No finding presently establishes that Rush and Daniels entered into a corrupt bargain, and an investigation should not begin by assuming its conclusion. But Rush's own public remarks about interviewing Daniels during Purdue's presidential-selection process, combined with the timing of Daniels' subsequent decision to put Rush on the Supreme Court, create legitimate questions that should be answered with records and evidence rather than speculation.

The chronology is particularly important.

In June 2012, Purdue University's Board of Trustees selected Daniels to become the university's next president. Daniels, however, did not immediately leave the governor's office. He remained governor of Indiana for the remainder of 2012 and would not begin his Purdue presidency until January 2013.

That distinction matters because Daniels was still exercising the enormous powers of the governor's office during the months between his selection by Purdue and his departure for West Lafayette. One of those powers was filling vacancies on the Indiana Supreme Court.

In September 2012, while still governor and after already being selected for the Purdue presidency, Daniels chose Tippecanoe Superior Court Judge Loretta Rush for the Indiana Supreme Court. Rush joined the Court in November. Daniels completed his term as governor and subsequently assumed the Purdue presidency in January 2013.

The sequence therefore was not simply "Daniels became Purdue president and later appointed Rush." Purdue selected Daniels while he was still governor, and Daniels subsequently exercised his gubernatorial appointment authority to place Rush on Indiana's highest court before he actually assumed his new position at Purdue.

That makes Rush's later description of having interviewed Daniels in connection with Purdue's presidential process worthy of much closer examination.

RUSH'S OWN WORDS DESERVE AN EXPLANATION

During Purdue's Presidential Lecture Series in March 2025, Rush discussed her involvement in interviewing Daniels before he became Purdue president. The comment deserves more attention than it has received because it raises an elementary question: What role did a Tippecanoe County judge have in evaluating the sitting governor for the presidency of Purdue University?

Perhaps there is an entirely innocent explanation. If so, Rush, Daniels and Purdue should be able to provide it, supported by the surviving records.

But the public should not be asked simply to assume that nothing unusual happened. Investigators should establish who invited Rush into the Purdue process, when she became involved, what authority or role she possessed, who participated with her, what she asked Daniels, what conclusions she communicated afterward and to whom those conclusions were provided.

Then investigators should place that chronology alongside Rush's pursuit of the Indiana Supreme Court vacancy. When did Daniels first know Rush was a candidate? When did Rush decide to seek the position? When did they communicate? Did their discussions ever encompass both Purdue and the Supreme Court vacancy?

Those questions can be answered. The AG needs to ask the questions if the DOJ and FBI doesn't. A governor in Illionois went to prison for talking about selling an open seat in the U.S. Senate; here, it sure seems like we had a sitting governor sell an open seat for his job at Purdue, which so many questioned at the time. He had not prior school or university administration experience to qualify him for the top job. Rokita needs to attack and shine a bright light as soon as possible.

FOLLOW THE DOCUMENTS, NOT THE POLITICS

An investigation should seek surviving emails, calendars, telephone records, correspondence, Purdue presidential-search documents, trustee records and other communications involving Rush and Daniels during the relevant period. It should likewise examine records surrounding Rush's Supreme Court application and Daniels' selection of her from the finalists submitted through Indiana's judicial-selection process.

The purpose isn't to manufacture a scandal. It is to determine whether one occurred.

The difference is fundamental. The timing and Rush's statement constitute reasons to ask questions; they are not themselves proof of a quid pro quo. Evidence of an agreement, reciprocal understanding or other improper arrangement would be necessary before Indiana could responsibly conclude that the Supreme Court appointment resulted from a corrupt bargain.

But refusing to ask those questions because they concern a chief justice would be equally unacceptable.

AGAIN, WHERE WAS THE INDIANA MEDIA?

Rush has occupied one of Indiana's most powerful positions for more than a decade. She joined the Supreme Court in 2012 and became chief justice in 2014, giving her enormous influence over the administration of Indiana's judiciary, attorney admissions, lawyer discipline and the broader direction of the state's court system.

That makes the circumstances surrounding her original appointment more important, not less.

Indiana's traditional media should also ask why Rush's Purdue comments haven't generated greater scrutiny. When the sitting chief justice publicly describes participating in the evaluation of the governor who subsequently appointed her to the Supreme Court, reporters should want to know exactly what happened.

The answer may prove completely benign. Journalism nevertheless requires asking the question, pointing out bizarre admissions of the corrupt, and setting the agenda, attack Rush, who works to scub the internet and her wikipedia bio from sharing her failures: Indiana itself acknowledges a serious access-to-justice and lawyer-supply problem. In her 2026 State of the Judiciary address, Rush said Indiana ranks 47th nationally in lawyers per capita, noted that two Indiana law schools closed during the past decade, and said some counties have as few as five attorneys.  The Supreme Court had already created a 23-member Commission on Indiana’s Legal Future in 2024 specifically because Rush characterized the lawyer shortage as “critical.”

HE has investigated many attorney discipline lawfare cases that demand reversal and her resignation.

That creates a legitimate accountability question: Rush has been chief justice since 2014, so how much responsibility should the judiciary's longtime administrative leader bear for a problem that became this severe during her tenure? Calling that failed leadership, inadequate planning, institutional insularity, or ineffective administration is an argument that can be investigated and supported with evidence. Calling it corruption requires additional evidence of dishonesty, abuse of office, improper financial benefit, favoritism, concealment, or comparable misconduct.

There are also structural questions worth examining. Rush chairs the Indiana Judicial Nominating Commission, which interviews candidates for appellate vacancies and sends three nominees to the governor. That commission also selects Indiana's chief justice.  Meanwhile, Indiana's judicial-discipline system ultimately places formal disciplinary authority in the Indiana Supreme Court itself: the Judicial Qualifications Commission investigates and prosecutes allegations, but the Supreme Court determines formal discipline.  

That structure doesn't prove corruption, but it provides fertile ground for a serious examination of institutional independence, conflicts, accountability and concentration of authority under Rush "the supreme leader" who has been called "the Führer."

ATTORNEY GENERAL ROKITA CAN SEEK THE ANSWERS

Attorney General Todd Rokita should determine what investigative authority his office possesses and what other state or federal authorities would have jurisdiction over allegations involving conduct surrounding a Supreme Court appointment.

There is a particular institutional problem here because Indiana's Inspector General primarily has jurisdiction over the executive branch, not the judiciary. An allegation touching the chief justice therefore presents precisely the kind of situation in which ordinary governmental accountability mechanisms can become complicated.

Complicated cannot mean uninvestigated. Besides some one will filp and take a deal to testify. She isn't allowed more due process than she gave so many attorney's she pushed out of their careers in the past. Her court was and acted illegal many times. Rokita, Braun, Daniels and nearly every member of the Indiana General Assembly know of her history of trampling constituional rights of others. Even she knows it. Behind that smile is crooked snake imposter, not a shark, not a lawyer, not even a good student or leader, like Rokita himself. He needs to attack, attack and always attack. She is weak and vulnerable.

If the Attorney General lacks jurisdiction over some portion of the matter, his office should identify the authority that possesses it and make an appropriate referral if the evidence warrants one. Indiana cannot have an accountability system in which allegations involving sufficiently powerful officials simply fall between institutional cracks.

RUSH SHOULD RELEASE THE RECORDS

Chief Justice Rush can also answer these questions herself. She should explain precisely what she meant when she described interviewing Daniels, identify her role in Purdue's presidential process and authorize the release of any records that would document what occurred.

She should explain when she first met Daniels, when she first communicated with him about Purdue, when she decided to seek the Supreme Court vacancy and whether the two ever discussed her judicial ambitions during the Purdue presidential-selection process.

Those answers matter because public confidence in courts rests heavily upon the belief that judicial positions are awarded based upon qualifications and merit rather than political favors or reciprocal arrangements.

Rush should therefore have every incentive to establish exactly what happened.

If the evidence demonstrates that the Purdue interview and Rush's subsequent Supreme Court appointment were completely unrelated, release it and end the controversy. Daniels deserves the same opportunity to explain the chronology and his relationship with Rush.

But if an examination uncovers evidence that assistance involving Daniels' Purdue presidency was connected in any fashion to Rush's Supreme Court appointment, Indiana would be confronting a profoundly serious matter involving the integrity of its highest court.

After more than a decade of Rush's leadership, Hoosiers are entitled to know which explanation is true.

The Attorney General should seek the records. Purdue should preserve and produce the historical documents. Daniels and Rush should answer the questions. And Indiana's press should finally examine the 2012 chronology with the seriousness it deserves.

An investigation does not presume corruption. It determines whether corruption occurred.

When the questions concern the person entrusted with leading Indiana's judiciary, that distinction shouldn't provide a reason to avoid an investigation. It should provide the reason to conduct one. She opened the doors, and Troy needs to fall.