Credit-card-crazed ex-DA Rachael Rollins missed out on being reimbursed for a junket to Berlin and Lisbon, sticking Suffolk County taxpayers with the bill, a Herald analysis of her voluminous expenditures found.
Rollins, now working part-time at Roxbury Community College for $80,000, tore through her taxpayer-funded credit card in her first year as Suffolk district attorney — jetting off 18 times, going to spas in Ireland and Virginia, staying in posh hotels and being a regular at the “stylish and elegant” Oceanaire Seafood Room in the Financial District, newly obtained records from 2019 reveal.
Yet she missed out on a refund for her trip to Germany and Portugal early in her tenure with the left-leaning national nonprofit Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP) to study “second chances” and decriminalization of drug use.
She tweeted up a storm from both swanky European cities in May of 2019 and used her taxpayer-funded credit card at the Hilton in Berlin ($458) and for eating out in Lisbon at Porto Bay Liberdade ($25.55) in public expenditures that the nonprofit would have paid for, FJP told the Herald Monday.
“Often elected leaders front costs related to travel or transportation, and those costs are thereafter submitted for reimbursem*nt by FJP funds,” said the non-profit’s Executive Director Miriam Kirnsky, who added the trips are never intended to “create a fiscal burden … to taxpayers.”
But that’s exactly what Rollins did by leaving money on the table. The DA’s office told the Herald Tuesday they have no record of her ever seeking a reimbursem*nt.
In a follow-up public records request, the Herald found that, during her time in office as DA, Rollins spent $33,132 on her P-card — a taxpayer-paid procurement card with her name on the front. That sum includes $13,969 from 2019 and $19,163 during her remaining term in office.
According to the state Comptroller’s office, it was her job to police the use of such cards given to her office. All this while being paid $190,999 as DA from January 2019 until sworn in as U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts on Jan. 10, 2022 — with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.
She was forced to resign from that lofty post on May 19, 2023, following two scathing Department of Justice reports on her rocky tenure. She was accused of trying to influence the outcome of the Suffolk DA’s race and attendinga DNC fundraiser in Andover in a possible Hatch Act ethics violation.
Rollins did not return a message left at her Roxbury Community College office Tuesday seeking comment on her first year’s bills and failing to seek reimbursem*nt for the 2019 junket to Berlin and Lisbon.
As in the previous P-card story, Rollins appears to be ducking all responsibility.
“The taxpayers deserve to know why these whirlwind trips were needed to maintain public safety in Suffolk County,” Mary Connaughton, Pioneer Institute’s chief operation officer, told the Herald Tuesday. “Even if policy allows the DA to control the purse strings, all spending should be in the public’s interest.”
Rollins’ first-year bills show a proclivity for expensive dinners out at The Oceanaire. Those bills came in at $275, $246, $127. She dropped another $260 at MIDA, in Boston’s South End — where every meal is billed as “a gift just for you.”
Rollins also billed taxpayers in Suffolk County — Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop — a whopping $323 at the Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg, Va., in August of 2019 at the Triple Five Star resort in horse country, records show.
Just as mindboggling for a DA’s investigative duties was a trip to Ireland the same month where Rollins dined at The Holy Grail in New Ross, Ireland, an Indian eatery, along with bills for the Brandon House Hotel & Spa in Wexford, Ireland, and St. Michael’s Theater nearby for a total of $611. That tally does include $300 for “Fast Frame,” yet no explanation is given.
It’s clear that the pandemic that locked down the planet in March of 2020 did curtail her multiple flights to D.C., Cleveland, New Jersey, New York and elsewhere, but it did not stop Rollins’ penchant for fine dining.
“I bet Oceanaire was sorry to see her go,” one observer of the credit card bills commented.
Some of the charges picked up by taxpayers remain a mystery because Rollins has refused to respond at all — including why fly to St. Louis? Why use American Airlines and Delta over discount carriers? What is so important in North Carolina, South Carolina, Philadelphia, Ohio? Why a $300 PayPal entry for the “Rose Parade” in California?
And, why is the Suffolk DA charging for meals in the Berkshires? The Easton Hotel in Washington, D.C.? The A-Loft in Harlem? A Five Guys in Framingham and Roche Brothers for a $32.95 grocery run?
The state Department of Higher Education declined to comment on Rollins’ post at Roxbury Community College overseeing a program “serving individuals returning from incarceration” or whether she now has a state-funded credit card. The community college said that “at this time,” they are “not responding to media inquiries regarding Rachael Rollins.”
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