HARTFORD, Conn. — Embattled Chief State’s Attorney Richard J. Colangelo Jr. agreed to resign on Wednesday, amid mounting pressure over an alleged patronage hiring.
In a letter submitted to the Criminal Justice Commission, Colangelo said that he would retire March 31.
“I want to thank Mr. Colangelo for doing the right thing today, under very difficult circumstances,” Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald, the commission chairman, said during a special meeting of the commission at the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney in Rocky Hill.
During the remainder of his time in office, Colangelo has agreed to work solely on administrative duties and will not prosecute or investigate any further cases, McDonald said.
Colangelo had been under fire for his decision to hire the daughter of a state budget officer from whom he was seeking raises for himself and other senior employees. Last week, U.S. Attorney Stanley A. Twardy Jr. — hired by Gov. Ned Lamont late last year to investigate that decision — released a report questioning Colangelo’s credibility.
“I want to indicate that after reading the Twardy report, that I found the conduct of the Chief State’s Attorney to be extremely disappointing and disturbing,” commission member Scott Murphy, the former state’s attorney for the New Britain judicial district, said during the meeting. “I am pleased that he has chosen to retire. It is the right thing for the Division of Criminal Justice.”
Murphy added that he was “confident” that if Colangelo had not chosen to retire, the commission would have begun proceedings to terminate him.
In his resignation letter, Colangelo said that he did not plan to address the Twardy report, “save to say that I vehemently disagree with many of its conclusions.”
“I care too much about the Division to have the imbroglio over my efforts to ensure the very best are attracted to supervisory position to detract from the important work of the Division,” he wrote.
The mounting controversy surrounding Colangelo was complicated by the fact that the process to remove a Chief State’s Attorney is lengthy, relying on an esoteric series of regulations that have never been used in Connecticut. The power to remove a Chief State’s Attorney rests with the Criminal Justice Commission, which would serve as a judge and jury in a proceeding resembling an impeachment trial.
Lamont told reporters last week that he would fire Colangelo if he could, saying, “I have zero tolerance for this type of ethical malfeasance.”
The Twardy report investigated “ethical or other improprieties” regarding the hiring of Anastasia Diamantis — the daughter of former deputy budget director Konstantinos Diamantis — as executive assistant to the Chief State’s Attorney in the summer of 2020.
A column last year in the Hartford Courant first drew attention to the hiring of the younger Diamantis, who was given a starting salary of about $99,000 — more than most state prosecutors earn. Not long before she was hired, Colangelo had been pressing her father for raises for himself and senior prosecutors, arguing that salary scales for prosecutors were imbalanced, and that the disparities were hurting recruitment efforts.
When Anastasia Diamantis applied for the executive assistant position at the Division of Criminal Justice, she had been working for about five years at the Department of Rehabilitation Services, and also had a part-time job at a construction management company, Construction Advocacy Partners. That company was involved in representing municipalities that used grant money distributed by the state Office of School Construction Grants and Review, which her father directed, to build schools.
Colangelo told the Courant last month that he “never looked at her as a political hire” and that her part-time job “didn’t raise any red flags for me.”
As Chief State’s Attorney, Colangelo was tasked with overseeing Connecticut’s 13 state’s attorneys and effectively oversaw the administration of Connecticut’s criminal justice policies.
Colangelo was appointed to Chief State’s Attorney in Jan. 2020, following the retirement of former Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane, a well-respected career prosecutor. In 2021, Colangelo was reappointed for a five-year term.
During the reappointment process last year, Criminal Justice Commission members raised concerns about tensions between Colangelo and Deputy Chief State’s Attorney Kevin D. Lawlor, who had also been a candidate for the top job. At the time, Colangelo reassured the commission that though there had been “challenges,” they had “worked through them.”
Prior to becoming Chief State’s Attorney, Colangelo was the State’s Attorney for the Stamford/Norwalk judicial district. He had been hired as an assistant prosecutor for the district in 1993 and became its top prosecutor in 2015, overseeing prosecutors in three courts and serving as the chief state law enforcement officer in eight Fairfield County municipalities.
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