Twardy Report: An Incident in the Men’s Room.

A vivid moment from former U.S. Attorney Stanley Twardy’s report on Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo’s hiring of then-deputy budget director Kostantinos Diamantis’s daughter as an executive assistant in Colangelo’s office. An official at the Department of Administrative Services (DAS), where Diamantis worked as the head of the state’s school construction grants program, recalled a startling autumn 2018 incident in the men’s restroom at DAS.

The DAS official, according to Twardy’s report, recalled Diamantis saying “in his ear, ‘When are you going to hire my daughter?’ The DAS official described Mr. Diamantis’s persistence and repeated inquiries over a period of a few months about hiring Anastasia [Diamantis] at DAS.”

Colangelo hiring Ms. Diamantis was not enough. Diamantis pere had to spike the ball after his daughter snagged a $40,000 a year raise when Colangelo hired her. “The official described that after the [Criminal Justice] Division hired Anastasia in 2020, Mr. Diamantis made several comments to him along the lines of, ‘you couldn’t get it done, but she’s got a better job anyways.'”

“Mr. Diamantis,” the report notes, “denied pressuring any DAS or other state official to hire Anastasia.”

It’s called a restroom for a reason. It ought to be a no-go zone for that sort of ugly business, especially violating someone’s space by getting in his ear in the narrow confines of a restroom. These are the small universal rules that are required to sustain a civilized society.

Published February 4, 2022.