4 top members of Labrador staff leaving

BOISE — Four top members of the Idaho Attorney General’s Office are leaving this month, the office said Friday.

Solicitor General Theo Wold, Chief of Staff Tim Frost, Chief of the Civil and Constitutional Defense Lincoln Wilson and Communication Director Beth Cahill are all departing this month.

Raúl Labrador, who became attorney general Jan. 2 of this year, said he can see why the transition to the first new head of the office in two decades wasn’t without challenges.

“I think it’s been difficult because I’m a different kind of attorney general,” he said. “I understand that the job of the attorney general is not to protect the bureaucracy, but to let the bureaucracy know what the limits of their power are. ... I think that’s been a shift in how the office of attorney general has worked, and for some people it was difficult.”

In May, Chief Deputy Attorney General David Dewhirst left his position. Labrador said Friday that the position will be filled by Phil Broadbent, a former general counsel and chief financial officer of Scentsy, a marketing company based in Meridian, Idaho.

“I hired some of the most talented people in the state of Idaho,” Labrador said in an interview Friday, “and they are very successful, highly ambitious and they’re very coveted.”

Phil Skinner, who had been legal counsel to the Idaho State Tax Commission, will step into the role as chief of staff, Labrador said.

The office has seen its share of new faces since Labrador took office; more than 20 staff members left after he defeated longtime incumbent Lawrence Wasden in the 2022 primary election.

After the transition, other employees have left, including six of eight deputy attorneys general assigned to the Department of Health and Welfare, the Idaho Capital Sun reported in May. ​​

He said the recent departures are happening for varied reasons, and said he’s happy with the work the outgoing employees did and with replacements and interim replacements. Wold’s deputy solicitor general, Josh Turner, will serve as interim solicitor general. There will be a national search to permanently fill the position, Labrador said.

Wold — who held a position not used in the office for decades until Labrador reinstated it when he took office — said he is fulfilling a longtime goal of joining the military. His last day was Friday. He will train as a commissioned intelligence officer for the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Wold previously served as an adviser in the Trump administration.

“During my time at the White House, the people I respected the most, who I thought were the most effective in doing their jobs and serving the people of the country, all have one thing in common: they all had either served in the military or were still currently serving,” Wold said.

He said he’d sought to join the military years ago and only recently was provided an opportunity to train. When he completes training, he’ll serve as an intelligence officer in a special operations unit.

In his position in Labrador’s office, Wold was tasked with providing litigation advice, working with Wilson on civil litigation and constitutional defense, and multi-state litigation. Wold hadn’t been licensed to practice law in Idaho when he was first hired; he was admitted to the state bar in April, which allowed him to practice law in court.

Labrador’s administration has been significantly more aggressive in its approach to joining multi-state litigation.

In the first six months of his tenure, the office signed onto or led more than 100 multi-state lawsuits. These lawsuits were praised by one former Idaho attorney general and criticized by another.

Wold and Wilson headed a number of these efforts, which Wold pointed to as highlights of his time as solicitor general. Most recently, the office filed an amicus brief in an effort to overturn the landmark 9th Circuit Court decision Martin v Boise that said homeless people cannot be ticketed or punished for sleeping outside.

An amicus brief is designed to assist the court by providing further information or advice regarding questions of law or fact.

“My work here is very much an encapsulation of the change between the previous attorney general and attorney general Labrador,” Wold said.

Former attorney general Lawrence Wasden’s office had participated in 33 multi-state amici efforts, the office previously said via a pubic records request.

Wold also pointed to efforts in other states that revolved around Second Amendment issues, which he said Idaho took the lead on.

Labrador said other states and Second Amendment advocates now consider his office a leader on the issue.

“I think that’s significant,” he said.

Frost’s last day in the office is slated for Oct. 14; it wasn’t confirmed where he is going. Labrador said his replacement, Skinner, is a “proven leader” and he’s excited to have him serving in the role.

Skinner had specialized in multi-state corporate income tax, and represented the Idaho Tax Commission in Board of Tax Appeals hearings, district court cases, and Idaho Supreme Court cases. He became lead deputy attorney general at the Tax Commission in 2015.

Wilson has been replaced in the interim by his deputy in the office of civil and conditional defense, Jim Craig. Labrador said he’s conducting interviews to permanently fill this position.

Cahill’s departure will be next week, with an announcement for her replacement expected at that time.

Wold said that he appreciated his time at the office, but said it’s a high-pressure job with long days that include weekend work, so turnover is to be expected. Many attorneys also take a significant pay cut when they go to the office from private practice, he said.

Labrador said some of his changes may have made the transition difficult as well.

For instance, he changed a policy so all legal opinions on major issues had to be approved by himself or Wold before they were issued.

Labrador did not name the case, but alluded to a situation in which a deputy attorney general for the Department of Health and Welfare reissued a previous legal opinion that he did not approve and the opinion has been at the center of court litigation. The Deputy Attorney General, Daphne Huang, was fired and is suing Labrador for alleged retaliation, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

Wold said he’s proud of the work he did, but he wants to see more from the office. He said one of his goals was for the office to provide more amici briefs to the state Supreme Court.

“We see the Idaho Supreme Court and Idaho State law as central to what we do,” he said.

Labrador said he didn’t have a specific timeline for permanently filling the still-open positions but said he’d wait till he had “the perfect person.” He said he anticipated they would be filled by the time the Legislature returns to session in January.

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.