In the process, that someone also would save Hoosier taxpayers a fair bit of money. He’s used public funds to hire a Washington, D.C. law firm and local private counsel to help with his self-destructive excavation.

That’s because Rokita’s response when he finds he’s dug himself into a hole is to drop the shovel and scream for someone to bring him a backhoe. Then he goes about making that hole deeper and deeper … and deeper.

Some fine reporting by Marilyn Odendahl of The Indiana Citizen makes this abundantly clear.

In her latest coverage, Odendahl reveals that—yet again—Rokita is the subject of a preliminary investigation by the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission. This investigation is—yet again—the result of his foolish campaign to persecute Dr. Caitlin Bernard.

The Indiana Supreme Court already has publicly reprimanded our attorney general once—with two of the five justices saying a wrist slap wasn’t punishment enough—and now he could be punished again.

He has no one to blame but himself.

Rokita’s troubles with the disciplinary commission began in the summer of 2022.

That’s when Bernard performed an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped. The girl’s mother authorized the abortion. Bernard complied with all appropriate laws in both Indiana and Ohio.

Rokita didn’t bother to find out about any of that before rushing before the cameras at Fox News to condemn Bernard in terms not in any way supported by fact. His statements were so outrageous that even Fox disavowed them.

If Rokita had shut up at that point—if he’d stopped his digging—he might have been all right, even though he’d already made the comments that prompted the Supreme Court to reprimand him.

But he didn’t.

He continued to malign Bernard, who sued him. Much legal wrangling followed, with Rokita—again, spending taxpayer money—desperately searching for a forum friendly to his fact-free arguments.

He found one in the Indiana Medical Licensing Board, where a couple members had made substantial financial contributions to his political campaigns and yet saw no reason to recuse themselves. The board reprimanded Bernard for violating patient confidentiality standards and fined her $3,000—a decision condemned by medial and legal ethics experts across the nation.

The medical licensing board’s action was pilloried nationally for at least two reasons.

One was that Bernard shared no information not routinely found in medical journal articles.

The second was that Rokita, who pressed the complaint—with expensive private counsel, again at taxpayer expense—revealed all the same information before a much wider audience.

Rokita’s heedless campaign to persecute Bernard prompted prominent attorneys in the state to file grievances against Rokita with the disciplinary commission.

Eventually, the Supreme Court voted, 3-2, to accept a conditional agreement reprimanding Rokita. In that agreement, Rokita acknowledged, under penalty of perjury, in an affidavit that he’d violated professional rules of conduct.

Chief Justice Loretta Rush and Justice Christopher Goff were the two dissenters. They felt Rokita merited more serious penalties.

The three who voted in Rokita’s favor presented him with a sweetheart deal—a chance to walk away from an extended professional misconduct with only the lightest tap on the wrist.

Anyone with a lick of sense would have known enough to accept such a gift with gratitude—and silence.

Not Todd Rokita.

He immediately issued a statement that contradicted what he said—again, under penalty of perjury—in the affidavit.

His about-face led at least two lawyers, including one with much experience enforcing standards of professional conduct, to file fresh grievances.

Thus, the new preliminary investigation, which likely will determine when Rokita wasn’t telling the truth—when he was under oath or when he was speaking to the citizens of this state.

Rokita’s response to this latest investigation was more of the same. A statement issued by his office—but to which no one attached his or her name—blamed “the Left” for his troubles.

That is the first time anyone ever has accused Loretta Rush—a devotee of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps the most conservative jurist ever to sit on the high bench—of being a liberal.

Now, the Indiana Supreme Court has another chance to take the shovel out of Todd Rokita’s hands.

Let us hope the justices do so.

All his digging is getting expensive.