The bully strikes back. Bowden-Lewis complains of discrimination and retaliation. Blames Courant for publishing public information.
It is a letter better suited to be sent to Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis rather than aimed at the members of the Public Defenders Services Commission by her lawyer. The December 19th missive from Madsen, Prestley & Parenteau to the Commission reminds members what they know–discrimination is illegal.
“As you are aware, federal and state laws prohibit discrimination based on race and sex, as well as retaliation against employees because they complain about, resist or oppose, discriminatory practices,” the letter states. The letter arrived 18 days after a devastating investigative report found “that Ms. Bowden-Lewis would often bully or marginalize employees who she did not favor or who questioned her in any way. Indeed, on several occasions, we determined that if an employee was viewed as ‘disloyal’ or on her ‘bad side,’ Ms. Bowden-Lewis would take steps to ensure that the employee remained that way.”
All but one of the members of the commissioners resigned in the aftermath of a similar letter from Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer last winter. Those members were alarmed, Daily Ructions has learned, at the unhelpful response they received from the Office of the Attorney General in the immediate aftermath of the Bowden-Lewis attack. The current members were chosen, in part, based on their resolute determination to straighten out the mess at the public defenders agency.
Among its extraordinary accusations, the letter includes one that raises identity politics into the realm of madness. “In March of 2023, this office wrote to the Commission to address the Chief Public Defender’s concerns about discrimination. Then, in August of 2023, the Chief Public Defender expressed questions and concerns to the Commission’s current Chairman regarding the appearances and implications of his actions that accorded heightened status and trust to information that he sought from a white male subordinate employee of the Chief Public Defender instead of the Chief Public Defender herself, or instead of another employee who had more responsibility for the issue and who is an Asian male.”
That chilling sentence reveals that Bowden-Lewis believes the agency’s employees are her employees. They are not. They are state employees with rights and responsibilities that do not emanate from Bowden-Lewis. The wild accusation describes Bowden-Lewis’s vision of a state agency. All information must come from her and every act will be viewed from a poisonous prism of gender and race.
And then the letter takes cover on the disreputable claim of public information reaching the public. This time it was through The Courant’s Ed Mahony. Curiously, after completing a splenetic attack on The Courant, Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer concludes with a request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
Expect the New Year to begin with a reckoning.
Published December 21, 2023.