Stuart Adams has a problem
>> Bryan Schott: Foreign
hello and welcome to Special Session. This is the podcast
where we discuss the top political stories
in the state of Utah and break them down for you
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at least one of them a week will be subscriber only.
Now that that's out of the way, on with today's
episode,
we have to talk about Utah Senate President Stuart
Adams. A little bit of a warning here. We're going to be
discussing sexual crime, sexual
offenses in today's show. So if you have young kids
listening or if you're bothered by these discussions,
go ahead and skip now and I'll catch you on the next
episode. I'm going to pause. You have time to
either turn it off or usher the younger
ears out of the room.
Okay, here we go. This is the story
in broad strokes and I'm sure you've heard about this. But
in case you haven't, last week news
broke that in 2024, Adams
quietly sparked a change to Utah law
that indirectly benefited his step
grandchild, his step granddaugh daughter who was
facing four first degree felonies for
child rape. In 2023, Adam's
granddaughter was charged with two counts
of first degree felony child rape and two
counts of first degree felony sodomy
on a child because of a pair of incidents with
a victim who was a 13 year old male
in Utah, 13 year olds cannot consent to
sex. She was an adult and the victim
was a child. Keep that in mind. So that happened in
2023. During the 2024 legislature,
Adams approached Republican Senator Kurt
Colore and made him aware of the situation involving
his granddaughter. C. Moore consulted with the
defense attorney for Adam's granddaughter. In
response, he inserted some language into a
larger omnibus crime Bill that
allowed for prosecutors to treat
18 year olds who have sex with 13 year
olds as a juvenile in certain
circum instead of a first degree
felony. Because 18 year olds are adults,
13 year olds cannot consent. They are children.
Instead of being charged with a first degree felony,
they can be charged with a third degree
felony, but only if the 18 year
old is still in high school and there was
no coercion involved in the incident.
That provision and the rest of the bill passed without
much notice. A few months after the law
changed, Adam's step granddaughter got a
plea deal in this case with a significantly
reduced sentence. Instead of four first
degree felonies, she pled guilty to a second
degree felony and three misdemeanors.
Instead of possibly spending years behind
bars, she got no additional jail time,
paid a fifteen hundred dollar fine, had to go through
counseling and had to do community service. And she
was also on probation. She does not have to register
as a sex offender. Now this law was not made
retroactive, so it didn't apply to
Adam's granddaughter, but she did benefit
from that change, at least indirectly.
The prosecutor, the defense attorney, you know,
the one that Senator Cullimore consulted with on
this change and the judge all
pointed to this change in the law and
the quote, legislative intent
behind it. And that's what led to this
plea deal for Adam's
granddaughter. Instead of four first degree felonies,
it was a second degree felony, the law says a third
degree felony, but she got a second degree felony. So
again, they were not applying these new standards
to her case, but they were aware of
the change and said that the
legislative intent, what lawmakers
wanted, was a big part of the reason
why Adam's granddaughter got this
plea deal. So that's the story in a nutshell.
Looking at the timeline and how all of this went
down, there is certainly an argument to be made
that the change to the law, which again
only happened because Adams talked to
cmore about the situation involving his
step granddaughter, indirectly benefited a
close member of Adams family. Adams
is currently facing calls to resign because
there's at least the appearance that he
used his position to benefit a family
member. One can certainly make that argument.
Now Adams is defending himself. He says that his hands are
clean in this case. He points to the fact that the law
was not retroactive. His granddaughter pled
guilty to a second degree felony, while this change in the
law says it's a third degree felony.
So you know, it's not the same thing. And
he's defending the process behind how this change
to the law came about. He says every bill that's run
in the legislature has to come from
somewhere. And most of them either come
from lobbyists or someone in the community
or the personal experience of lawmakers.
In an interview with KSL this week, Adam said there
was absolutely nothing unusual about how this change
to the law came about. And in that same interview,
he called the process perfect. No matter what
Adam says to defend himself, that the process was perfect,
that this law was not applied to his granddaughter,
that there was nothing unusual about this process,
you cannot deny that the optics are terrible in this case.
There was no transparency with how this change to the
law came about. And you cannot ignore these facts.
This change to the law was included in a larger
omnibus crime bill. All of the
recommendations that made it into that bill
came from a working group that discussed
changing these criminal statutes
for quite a long time. For several months before
the bill was drafted, the only one they did not
consider was this change
that was sparked by Adams. This was
the only thing that they did not talk about that
eventually made it into that bill. This change to the law is
a very narrowly tailored change.
It only applies in certain circumstances.
But those circumstances just happen to
fit the situation that Adam's granddaughter
was facing. It's really hard to get past those
two pieces of information when you consider that
Adam says the process behind this bill was
not flawed and it was, quote, unquote, perfect. And
Adams really isn't doing himself a lot of favors here. In that
KSL interview, Adams said that the incident
involving his granddaughter, you know, the one where she was
charged with child rape, he called it a, quote,
stupid mistake, stupid mistake. Child
rape. Potato, potato, I guess.
Also, Adams is currently attacking the media
for bringing this story up. He
claims that they're victimizing his granddaughter.
In that KSL interview, Adam says his step
granddaughter has been through enough.
She's been traumatized enough. She
was arrested at her school. She went to
jail for eight days. She was under home arrest
for more than 500 days. She had to wear an
ankle monitor. It was all very embarrassing. And
now they're dread nudging her through the mud again.
His quote was, what a humiliating event.
Now we're heaping on her a scarlet letter on her
forehead. It's wrong. The stories are
wrong. She's been convicted and tried, and
now we're doing it again in the media, and it's wrong. This is
pure deflection by Adams. He doesn't want to answer
questions about this anymore, so he's decided to
hide behind his granddaughter. He Wants to deflect
from what the real story is the
appearance that he used his position as one of the
most powerful legislators in the state of Utah
to push through a change to the law that ended up
benefiting his granddaughter who was facing years
in jail. Understand that Adam's step
granddaughter is not the victim here. That's the 13
year old. The 13 year old child in this
case, Adam's step granddaughter was an adult when this
happened. She was 18, she's an adult now.
The real victim is the 13 year old child. But
Adams is hiding behind his granddaughter,
claiming she's being victimized. She's
having to go through this trauma again. But we haven't heard
him voicing similar concerns about the
victim here. You know, the 13 year old child
who was part of this, the 13 year old who was
victimized by his step granddaughter,
who was an adult and facing first
degree felony charges for child
rape until she got a plea deal. We don't hear
Adams talking about that. By the way, it's pretty
clear that the victim's mother was not 100% on
board with the plea deal that was given to Adam's
granddaughter. She didn't attend the sentencing hearing. And at the
time the prosecutor said it was because she felt there
wasn't enough consideration being given to her son in this case,
you know, her son, the victim. And Adams is
attacking the media. So let's talk about how the media behaved in
this case. The media is not acting
irresponsibly by reporting this story. It is a
legitimate story. And I could argue
that they were extremely careful, even
overly careful when reporting this story. They
gave a lot of deference to Adams when they were reporting
this. When the Salt Lake Tribune first reported this story,
there were very few details about the
perpetrator or the victim. There was no mention
of their genders and no
specifics about exactly how the
perpetrator was related to Adams. They just had a relative
of Adams and one could
easily think they were talking about a cousin, they
were talking about a nephew, you know, a distant
relative. There was a whole spectrum of
relationships to Adams that this could have covered.
They were very vague in their reporting. A
few days later, after I read all of the court documents, I was able to
pin down that it was Adam's grandchild who
was the perpetrator in this case. Which
changes the story, at least in my opinion. I'm sure
it does in public perception as well, because
that familial relationship was much
closer than many people realized.
And the Senate actually confirmed to me that it was a
step grandchild. When I laid out how
I knew that it was his grandchild, they said it was actually a
step grandchild. I knew what gender the perpetrator was. I knew
the gender of the victim. But I chose not to include them in
this story because I didn't think it
was relevant. It didn't play a role in this story.
In fact, the public only learned of
the genders of the people in this story that the
perpetrator was Adam's stepdaughter
granddaughter, and that the victim was male
after KSL reported their story. So
if anything, the media was overly
careful about reporting this story. They were
very deferential to Adams
when reporting this out. So for him
to claim that the media is acting
irresponsibly in this case, it is not
a good faith argument. He's not arguing
that in good faith. So where do we go from here? Well, what
Adams did is not illegal. Um, in fact, he
followed the process on the Hill. Lawmakers proposed
bills, they propose laws, everybody
goes through a committee hearing, everybody gets to vote up or down,
and then it goes to the governor for his signature or
veto. So what Adams did is not
illegal. He followed the process. His claim
that this was how the process works is
absolutely true. But it looks
awful. The optics are terrible, and it
casts a cloud over his leadership,
over the Senate, and over the legislature
as a whole, because it colors how
people are going to look at them. And it. It
diminishes trust in that institution.
There is a perception, fair or
unfair, that lawmakers do things to
benefit themselves and that they're trying to benefit
from legislation. They're in it for themselves. They're trying to help
out a family member. And. And this only
adds to that perception. Fair or unfair,
this only adds to that. And
now people can ask questions
about any piece of legislation that
comes up on the Hill. It's a legitimate question
going forward. You can't brush this off
anymore because it's not illegal.
But it's hard to ignore the fact that
Adam's step granddaughter was facing time
in jail, the law changed, and
then she got a much more lenient
sentence in this case. It's really hard to get
past that. And that, I think, is
going to cast a shadow over the legislature going
forward. Adams and his defenders say that they
were just fixing a policy gap. They were
just fixing a problem they saw in the law. But why did
this need fixing now? The only reason they
realize it, quote, needed fixing
was because Adam's granddaughter, his step
granddaughter, was facing jail. Time.
That's the only reason that this came up.
So, yeah, there are going to be questions about this. It
just reinforces the
perception, again, fair or unfair, that
lawmakers are out of touch with their constituents, that they
are benefiting themselves, that they
want to derive a benefit for themselves,
derive a benefit for their family. Not in every piece of
legislation, but those questions are going to come
up. This was not an issue until it
impacted a close member of
Adam's family. The solution they came up with
was narrowly tailored and just so happened to
exactly fit the situation
that was impacting Adam's step
granddaughter. And then directly,
indirectly, she got a benefit out of this.
These are legitimate questions. I wrote a story about this
this week. There's a pattern of behavior
for Adams where he has this
tendency to dance in the
gray area of what is considered ethical
and what is not considered ethical. Last
year, I reported that there were multiple
complaints about the way that he reported
his campaign finance. State
law says that when you make a payment
to a vendor, you cannot list
a credit card company as the payee. But
for years, almost a decade,
Adams, and for his campaign and
for a couple of political action committees that he controls,
was reporting only payments
made to American Express.
Thousands of dollars of payments,
not providing any detail. State law says you have to
provide detail on this, but he wasn't doing
that. And there were complaints filed. When
Adams was contacted by the Lieutenant Governor's office
about this and told that his filing was deficient,
he also got some conflicting information that said
what he was doing was okay. So he continued to do
it. When it flared up again, he pointed to that
conflicting information. And then the Lieutenant Governor's office
said, well, yeah, you've been doing it wrong. You've been
breaking state campaign finance law.
This is law that's explicitly spelled out in the
code. You've been breaking it, but we're not going to
enforce it. So Adams got off, even though he
had been breaking the law for years, simply because somebody
gave him some conflicting information. And you could
argue that as the President of the Senate,
he should have known. He should be aware
of what the campaign finance laws say. But that's not how
he operated for years and years.
In 2022, he and a couple of his
grandchildren traveled to Qatar for the World cup
to watch the United States play in a match. That
trip was paid for by the Qatari government.
That's not illegal here in Utah. There's also not
a requirement that you have
to report that. Former Attorney General Sean Reyes
also traveled to Qatar for the World cup, and
the Qatari government picked up the tab for that
trip, or at least picked up most of the tab for
that trip. Again, you didn't have to disclose it because the
law does not require that. A few
months before Adams and his grandchildren traveled to Qatar for the World
cup, the Senate blocked a bill that was
sponsored by Republican Representative Candace
Perucci that would have required public officials
in Utah who accept gifts or
travel from foreign governments to
disclose them. Wouldn't have made them illegal, just that you had
to disclose them. But the Senate blocked that piece of
legislation. Perucci's been trying to run
that bill ever since, but it
has not gotten out of rules the last couple of years.
Made it to the Senate in 2022,
got blocked, and we haven't seen it yet, but she still
keeps filing it. So, again, there's more of that
perception, because a bill that would have
required public disclosure of this kind
of trip gets blocked, and then Adams takes a trip
to Qatar, and it just feeds into this perception that is
causing people to lose trust in government.
Look at what happened during the COVID pandemic. Right before the
2022 session. The week before the 2022
session, Adams tested positive for Covid.
But he was there on opening day, and during his
opening speech to the legislature, he
triumphantly announced that he had tested negative
that morning. That wasn't true. He actually
tested positive twice, but didn't bother to
tell anyone. In fact, he lied about it. And the Senate only
acknowledged that he tested
positive, that he had misspok.
Had, you know, lied about his COVID test
after the media started asking questions. Meanwhile,
he was standing there in close contact with
people. He wasn't wearing a mask, which was the guidance at
the time, and he was conducting
business as usual, knowing that he had tested positive
twice. In 2020, at the height of the
COVID 19 pandemic, Utah purchased about
20,000 doses of the
antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine,
which we know doesn't do anything for Covid, but it was all
the rage at the time. They spent $800,000 with
this pharmacy. The pharmacy was called Meds in Motion.
The owner was Dan Richards, and he had established a
relationship with Adams during the early
stages of the pandemic because they had
connected as part of this informal group
of Utah policymakers and business leaders and
community leaders who helped shape the state's
initial response. The state purchased those
drugs from Richard's Pharmacy Meds in
Motion. Without telling anyone at the health department. Uh,
when the media asked the Health Department about this
invoice for 20,000 doses of
hydroxychloroquine. The health Department didn't
know anything about it. Now, there was no evidence that Adams
was involved with that, but his close
relationship with Richards cast a
shadow on it. But there was another incident. Richards was
bringing in more of these drugs. And when one of his
shipments got stopped in California,
he reached out to high ranking officials in the state,
including Adams, asking for help getting it out
of Customs. And a few days later, Adams
himself asked the director of the Utah Inland
Port Authority to lend a hand.
Adam stepped in and used his clout
to help out Richards. And it just so happened that
Adams at the time was a huge proponent
of using hydroxychloroquine to treat
Covid, even though there was absolutely no evidence that
it worked. I had spent a lot of time going through old
news reports with Adams, old news articles,
and he's got a long paper trail. He's been in Utah
politics for quite a long time. And there was a
story from 2011 that really jumped out at me. It's not
online anymore. I had to find it through LexisNexis. But in
2011, the Utah Department of
Transportation was planning to erect a
billboard near South Main street and I15
in Layton. And the land that they were going to put this
billboard on was owned by udot.
And they met with city officials and chose
this spot for this billboard. It was part of a
billboard relocation that happened when they built
another construction project. So they had to move these billboards, and
this was one of the places where they were going to relocate it to.
Adams was in the Senate at the time. He. The previous year, he had
taken over for Greg Bell, who had become the
Lieutenant Governor when former
Governor Huntsman left to become the ambassador to China.
And Lieutenant Governor Gary Herbert became the governor,
and Herbert tapped Bell to be his
Lieutenant governor in the Senate at the time,
Adams was actually the other finalist for that job.
And Herbert, when choosing between the two of them, chose
Greg Bell. And Adams then moved
into Bell's Senate seat. Adams was in the Senate at
the time. And shortly before construction on this billboard was
set to start, Adams heard from some constituents
who called him to complain about the billboard.
And so Adam started making some calls to
UDOT officials, to state officials,
trying to figure out what was going on, and he successfully stopped
construction of this billboard. Now,
Adams did have a lot of poll. Not only was he in the Senate, he was the
former chairman of the Utah
Transportation Commission, and he was a member of the Senate
Transportation, Public Utilities and Technology Committee.
So he had those connections, and transportation
officials would listen to him. And he got this billboard
blocked. Well, the constituents that reached out to
him to get this billboard stopped, they were his mom and
dad, just happened to be his mom and dad who lived across the street
from where this billboard was supposed to go up. Now,
Adam said his parents weren't aware that there was going to be a billboard
going up in that location until construction started. And
he faulted U DOT for not holding any hearings, allowing
residents to voice their concerns about the billboard, even though
that wasn't a requirement at the time. And in those news reports, he
said that he would have made the same calls if anyone else had raised
concerns about the billboard. But. But the people who complained
were his mom and dad, and that's why he stepped
in. Now, as I said, at this time, state law did not
require U DOT to seek approval from the
city Council or hold a public hearing on the
billboard placement. You DOT went through the proper
channels. They went through the process.
But Adam's got it stopped because his
parents objected to it. So we know that he's not
averse to stepping in and throwing
his weight around to help a member of his family. He did it back in
2021 to stop a billbo. Bottom line is
that politically, this story is extremely
damaging, not only for Adams, but for the Utah
Legislature as a whole. It damages public trust
in our institutions. It adds to this
perception, earned or not, fair or not,
that public officials use their power
to benefit their friends, benefit their family.
I don't know if that's a fair assessment or not, but it just adds to
that perception, and that's why this is so damaging.
Now Adams is facing calls to resign. He says he's
not going to. I don't know what kind of public pressure is
going to come out of this. I don't know if the pressure is going to
sustain on this, whether he's going to be able to sweep
this under the rug, whether everyone's just gonna move
past this. But it's an extremely damaging story,
and there's still a lot of questions about it that I don't think we've gotten
sufficient answers for now. Adams is up for reelection
in 2026, and we'll see if there's any sort of
backlash, but my sense is there won't be. Voters
in Utah have shown that they're not going to
punish Republican lawmakers for what they see as
bad behavior. Take a look at what happened when they gutted
the Better Boundaries Initiative. Medicaid
expansion and medical cannabis.
The Legislature gutted those initiatives,
which were approved by a majority of voters.
They didn't suffer any consequences. Look at what happened
with Amendment D last year, where lawmakers rushed
into special session in August to put a
question on the ballot that would have allowed them to
override any citizen
initiative. It had misleading language. Adams was
involved in the writing of that language, which
was struck down by the Utah Supreme Court.
They didn't suffer any consequences in the
2024 election. The numbers in the
legislature remain the same. Democrats flipped
one seat, Republicans flipped one seat, and that was it.
So the lesson that Republicans, the lesson the
legislators take from that is you're not going to get punished
for this kind of behavior. Voters aren't going to hold you accountable.
At least they haven't yet. Will it happen to Adams?
It remains to be seen, but history
shows that it's unlikely to happen.
Thank you so much for listening. That's going be to do it for this
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