Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin pardoned Scott Smith, the father of a girl sexually assaulted in a Loudoun County school bathroom by a boy wearing a dress, after the man lashed out at school board members over their coverup of the incident.

Smith was initially arrested in 2021 and convicted of obstruction of justice and disorderly conduct after he became incensed at what he perceived as a lack of action by school officials. Following an appeal to a circuit court, Smith’s obstruction of justice conviction was dismissed, while a trial on the disorderly conduct conviction was initially scheduled for late September.

"I spoke with Mr. Smith on Friday, and I had the privilege of telling Mr. Smith that I will pardon him, and we did that on Friday," Youngkin announced during an interview. “We righted a wrong. He should've never been prosecuted here. This was a dad standing up for his daughter. Just to remind everyone, his daughter had been sexually assaulted in the bathroom of a school, and no one was doing anything about it.”

Youngkin then discussed how the boy in the skirt who committed the crime was moved to another school and sexually assaulted another young woman, calling the handling “a gross miscarriage of justice.”

Smith thanked Youngkin in a statement following the pardon. “I am grateful that the Governor recognizes that our justice system has been both weaponized and politicized to the point where my ability to receive a fair trial was in jeopardy,” the father said. “And while this pardon closes one chapter in this ongoing battle, a new chapter has now begun. I will continue to fight for parents and their children who are affected by these misguided and dangerous school policies.”

Smith’s lawyers wrote in the same statement that his pardon was a victory “for all parents who stand up against the government’s attempt to enact a radical agenda that is obsessed on teaching their children ‘what to think,’ rather than focusing on teaching children the critical lessons they need to learn in order to be successful later in life.”

Buta Biberaj, the Democratic commonwealth attorney for Loudoun County, argued that Youngkin’s pardon had “interfered in the legal process” and that it was an “unprecedented and inappropriate intervention into an active legal case.”

A judge previously forced Biberaj to recuse herself from Smith’s disorderly conduct case after his lawyers successfully argued Biberaj’s bias would interfere with Smith’s right to a fair trial.