The Salt Lake County District Attorney building in Salt Lake City is pictured on Wednesday, January 3, 2024. Photo: Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch

Democrats say the same standard should be held for other elected officials with problematic posts

By: Alixel Cabrera, Utah News Dispatch

In the wake of the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, a social media post from Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill drew ire from prominent figures in Utah’s political scene.

“Truly, a dead body is more competent than Trump to be President,” Gill wrote in a July 20 post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It would do exponentially less harm to our democratic republic and honor our ideals more.”

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Gill’s post came a week after the shooting at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally that left former President Trump with a bleeding ear, attracting uproar from Gov. Spencer Cox, who called the comment “disgusting” and “a new low,” and Republican lawmakers, who argued the opinion was a reflection of his character.

One of Utah’s top GOP legislative leaders, Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper called for his resignation and others brought up a new law — scheduled to become effective in July, 2025 — that targets the Salt Lake County District Attorney by requiring Gill to track time spent on criminal cases. The bill also lays out a process to potentially unseat Gill by allowing the governor to recommend a “replacement prosecutor” to the Utah Supreme Court if he finds the district attorney has “failed to prosecute crimes adequately.”

The Salt Lake County district attorney is an elected position chosen by Salt Lake County voters. At the time of the bill’s passage, Cox said the provision of the bill that grants him and the Utah Supreme Court such power would be language “we’ll certainly be looking at over the course of the year.”

“That’s a responsibility that I would take very seriously,” the governor said at the time, adding, “I believe elections have consequences. And so just because I disagree or don’t like what someone else is doing, that’s not grounds for recommending a replacement. That would only be used in the case of corruption or something that is more than just political.”

Angered by the social media post, Schultz said Gill had done “irreparable damage to the justice system” and “paints a dire picture of a politicized judicial system” in Salt Lake County.

“The toxic and hate-filled partisanship Sim Gill demonstrated in his post about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump, makes rational people question Sim Gill’s ability to fairly execute his duties to the people of Salt Lake County,” Schultz wrote in a post on X.

Schultz had a different stance when another controversy involving social media happened during the 2024 legislative session, when embattled school board member, Natalie Cline made a post incorrectly suggesting a female high school basketball player was transgender.

While the Legislature voted to censure Cline, both Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams wouldn’t go as far as calling for her resignation, arguing that she had to resign for herself, and if not, voters should decide her fate.

In Gill’s case, Schulz argued there have been allegations against the District Attorney’s office, for “cherry-picking prosecution and criminal charges, based on Sim Gill’s extreme partisanship.”

The day after Gill’s post, the district attorney made a clarification on X, writing that his words were misconstrued. His point, he wrote, was that there is more thought on an inanimate object than in Trump.

“We are so blind to the harm we are doing to the foundations of our Republic that inanimate objects would serve the interests of this country more,” Gill said in a statement.

Earlier this year, when Republican lawmakers put their crosshairs on Gill and his office with SB273, Democrats called it a political attack, and Gill said it created an “undue burden” which would compound issues in an already short-staffed and underfunded office. He also questioned whether lawmakers would devote funding to jail beds and to fix “our broken mental health system, affordable housing.”

Gill’s July 20 social media post was a poor choice of words, House Minority Leader Rep Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, told Utah News Dispatch on Thursday, also pointing to Gill’s clarification. However, she said she has an issue with not holding other elected officials accountable for other problematic posts that “dehumanize people,” including Cline’s.

“Like they told us, let the people decide on Natalie Cline, and the delegates decided not to have her as their nominee,” Romero said. “The people of Salt Lake County elected Sim Gill, not people in Davis County, not people in Summit County, or other counties where many of my colleagues live. That’s the choice people made.”

Though Schultz didn’t directly mention SB273, his post questioned Gill’s performance as district attorney, something that the bill intends to measure.

Rep. Kera Birkeland, who introduced the last-hour changes to SB273 laying out the process to potentially unseat a Salt Lake County district attorney, said “it’s time to move forward” with the bill in a social media post.

“We have a sufficient amount of victims, all ready to testify about (Gill’s) lack of prosecuting violent criminals. It’s clear he has a bias and victims of violent crimes have been hurting from it for years,” Birkeland wrote on X. “This recent post truly exposes his character.”

However, Romero, who opposed the bill, said she believes SB273 was politically motivated, and that other district attorneys should be held to the same standard as Gill.

“When you don’t do that, you look like you’re targeting someone,” Romero said. “And then people can read between the lines and assume it’s because of party affiliation or because you don’t agree with this person’s policy stance.”