Prosecutor in child care grants case says there’s probable cause Idaho official committed crime

A prosecutor appointed by Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said there is probable cause that a former Idaho Department of Health and Welfare employee who led a scrutinized child care grant program committed a crime, court filings show.

The allegation came with little other information — such as what crime the ex-state official, Ericka Rupp, is accused of, official charges she could face or what specific evidence backs up the claim. The assertion was detailed in new court documents to settle who pays roughly $187,000 in attorney fees from current and former Idaho health department officials who sought to block Labrador’s civil subpoenas relating to an investigation into the grant program. The new filings also underscores that an investigation is still probing how $72 million of federal child care grants were spent in Idaho.

“What began as an investigation based on the equivalent of reasonable suspicion of wrong-doing has now become a much more serious matter; there is now probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, and that petitioner (Ericka Rupp) committed said crime,” Special Deputy Attorney General Christopher Boyd wrote Dec. 18 in response to Rupp’s request for Labrador to pay attorney fees. 

Boyd, who is prosecuting attorney for Adams County, was appointed special prosecutor in the investigation in August.

Boyd cited, as support for his assertion in the court documents, a Legislative Services Office audit released in August that found a lack of internal controls in the Department of Health and Welfare led to grant funds being misspent. He also cited information provided by unnamed people that cooperated with Labrador’s civil investigative demands — which are essentially subpoenas for information in a civil case. 

Citing rules of professional conduct, Boyd declined to comment to the Idaho Capital Sun about the probable cause, which crime Rupp may have committed, whether other Idaho officials may have committed crimes tied to the investigation or how the audit or responses to Labrador’s investigative demands supports the assertion that there is probable cause that Rupp committed a crime. The Idaho Attorney General’s Office, through a spokesperson, also declined to answer the Idaho Capital Sun’s questions about the allegation.

Rupp’s attorney, in court filings last week, called the accusation unverified and said the court should ignore it.

“The Court should disregard the irrelevant and unsupported statements of Respondent’s new lawyer,” wrote Rupp’s attorney, referencing Boyd. “Indeed, counselor’s gratuitous, unsupported, and irrelevant statements, which permeate his public filing, are altogether inappropriate and improper.”

The move — announcing the belief that someone committed a crime in civil documents, without specifying the crime — is unusual for a prosecutor, said Greg Chaney, a lawyer who represents 36 organizations that received funds through the grant program. 

“It would be somewhat improper to allege something unless you’re going to back it up,” Chaney said, saying the process should involve petitioning a court for probable cause.

Rupp oversaw the federal grants under investigation, formally called the Community Partner Grant Program, for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare as the program manager for child care at the agency, Rupp’s attorney said in previous legal filings. 

Rupp’s attorney, in a statement to the Idaho Capital Sun before his response in court filings, cast the accusation as furthering a “politically motivated attack” on the grants program.

“Ms. Rupp is a dedicated professional who has devoted her life to public service in Idaho and giving back to our state,” attorney Scott McKay said in a statement. “For the attorney general to suggest otherwise and continue a politically motivated attack on a federally funded program that benefitted Idaho children is wrong.”   

Idaho Department of Health and Welfare spokesperson Greg Stahl praised Rupp’s performance and denied wrongdoing.

“Ericka was an excellent employee, and we’re confident that there was no wrongdoing. We can’t comment on pending litigation,” Stahl said in a statement.

Rupp left the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in December 2022, Stahl said.

Legislative auditors’ findings were serious enough to refer to the Idaho Attorney General’s Office for misuse of public funds, the audit found. Legislative Services Office’s audits are “very rarely” referred to the Idaho Attorney General’s Office, April Renfro, who led the audit, told lawmakers in November. 

The audit found the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare was not in compliance with state law in its distribution of the child care grants. But the audit doesn’t state clearly that state law was broken, Renfro previously told the Sun, instead flagging that issue for law enforcement to investigate. 

Boyd said in the court documents that the audit “detailed numerous other significant failures and likely unlawful acts.” Labrador now has probable cause to believe civil and criminal violations occurred, Boyd wrote. Idaho will seek search warrants “as appropriate” and gather testimony on intent and claimed defenses, Boyd wrote.

The state health department refused to submit a corrective action plan in response to the audit released this year. The agency disagreed with all of the audit’s findings. Budget committee co-chair Rep. Wendy Horman told lawmakers in November the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s response “calls into question our ability to authorize funds for the agency.”

Labrador is investigating tens of millions in child care grants distributed by the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. The Idaho Legislature appropriated $36 million in federal funds to the Idaho Department Health and Welfare in both 2021 and 2022 through legislation that directed the funds be used for community partner grants that address the pandemic’s impacts on school-aged children, including learning loss. 

In March, after being alerted by legislative budget writers about concerns that $14 million had gone toward children under age 5, Labrador issued the civil investigative demands. Top Idaho Department of Health and Welfare officials and Rupp sued Labrador in March, seeking to block his demands. 

Idaho lawmakers evaluate how to financially respond after audit into state health department

In August, an audit by Legislative Services Office found flaws in how the funds were distributed. In October, Boyd told their attorneys that he’d drop those demands to “conserve state resources,” saying the audit answered questions that the demands sought to answer. 

“Continued pursuit of the more general civil investigative demands makes little sense at this point; the investigation has long passed the point of establishing what occurred,” Boyd wrote in new filings in Rupp’s case. “The remaining questions to be investigated are much more specific. They revolve around issues of criminal intent (Why did the petitioner break the law?), and careful, fair consideration of potential defenses.”

Labrador, by Idaho law, is required to represent the state health department and other state agencies. But since the former congressman took over as the state’s top attorney in January, he has engaged in high profile legal clashes with some of the state’s largest agencies — including the state health department in this case and the State Board of Education, which his office sued alleging open meeting law violations with the University of Idaho’s attempted acquisition of University of Phoenix.