Compromised Loudoun County Prosecutor Refuses to Recuse from School-Board Removal Case

In Virginia, the gubernatorial election may be over, but the education issue that defined it remains very much in play.

Loudoun County became the epicenter of the battle over education thanks to a grassroots backlash against the imposition of critical race theory in the local curricula. An October Daily Wire story about a sexual assault in a local school bathroom and a subsequent cover-up by members of the administration added fuel to the fire.

Parents first woke up to the threat posed by activist school-board members after they discovered a private Facebook group in which members made plans for how to quell opposition to the progressive education agenda. Members of the Facebook group, called “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County,” compiled a list of parents who had spoken out against critical race theory in order to track their activities and in some cases “doxx” them, or publicize their personal information as a form of intimidation.

The outraged parents, including Ian Prior, a former employee of the Department of Justice, decided to organize. For his part, Prior founded Fight for Schools, a nonpartisan nonprofit, and worked alongside other likeminded parents to remove a number of the delinquent board members.

According to Prior, Buta Biberaj, the progressive Commonwealth attorney for Loudoun County is improperly interfering with those efforts by refusing to recuse herself from the removal case for Brenda Sheridan, the board’s chairwoman. Biberaj is refusing to preemptively recuse despite having been disqualified from handling another school board removal case.

The petition to remove Sheridan claims that board members “focused board attention on open bathroom policies, renaming schools, removing class rank, issuing special proclamations… and other issues unrelated to the core issue of a safe environment that is focused on an education program of high quality.”

The judge responsible for making that decision explained that if  “she [Biberaj] continued on this case there would never be acceptance on this case” within the community. Biberaj was a member of the Facebook group mentioned in the complaint, a key player in the sexual assault case, and has publicly endorsed “equity” as an important tenet of a public school education.

“The people of Loudoun County, there’s simply no way they could be confident in the integrity of this process if they have a commonwealth attorney who not only has essentially bashed our efforts, but has a pretty robust conflict of interest,” Prior told National Review.

“Prosecutors are supposed to be independent-minded, go where the facts take them, not be influenced by politics, but with our prosecutor we’ve seen anything but that,” he added.

Removal proceedings were initiated after parents gathered signatures amounting to ten percent of the votes cast in the last election. Now it’s up to Biberaj — unless activists are successful in their bid to have her disqualified — to decide whether to mount a case for removal before a judge.

Prior argues that given the Biberaj’s disqualification in the last case, there’s no reason why she shouldn’t be in this instance as well, “especially when we’ve now added everything regarding the sexual assault and cover-up.”

Biberaj sought jail time for Scott Smith, the father of the victim of the on-campus assault, after an incident involving Smith at a school board meeting. Her reaction to the assault itself was to recommend that “the [offending] student be removed only from his own school and wear an ankle monitor,” according to Fox 5, a local affiliate.

The assault took place in a girls’ bathroom and was perpetrated by a male student who was wearing a skirt at the time. It occurred months before the school board voted to allow biological males to use girls’ bathrooms.

Biberaj defended the decision to transfer the perpetrator to another school in the district by explaining that “we believed based on the facts that he had no history of having done this prior to this offense that was alleged.” The student is now accused of committing another sexual assault at the school he was transferred to.

Given that Loudoun County Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler met with Sheridan on a weekly basis, “it stands to reason that they’re going to have significant knowledge of what’s going on” in regards to the sexual assault case, Prior argues. Ziegler was, per Loudoun County sheriff Michael Chapman, “unmistakably aware of the offense” on the same day it occurred. Chapman also noted in a letter to Ziegler that the superintendent “sent an email on May 28, 2021 to members of the school board advising them of the incident.”

These revelations, Prior contends, represent only the cherry on top of the case for Sheridan’s removal, which he says is also predicated on her involvement in incriminating Facebook groups discussing school reopening plans and other social issues in the district.

“Ultimately, they’re the leadership, the buck stops with them, the entire dumpster fire that has been the Loudoun County school board that we have highlighted has been under their watch,” he continued. Prior and other activists are also seeking the removal of Atoosa Reaser, the board’s vice-chair.

While the country may have turned its eyes to other issues once the race for governor was decided, Prior observes that locally, parents’ zeal has not waned in the slightest, “nobody involved ever got involved because they thought this would have an impact on an election. They got involved because they send their children to school every day and they’re terrified. They’re terrified that their six-year-old is gonna be walking through the library and picking out a book that’s borderline pornographic, if not fully pornographic. They’re terrified that their children are gonna come home and hate the United States of America.”

“That’s why we said ‘well they have all the power, they have all the control,’ we need to organize in a way where they can’t ignore us anymore. That was the motivation.”