Project Veritas video leads to discrimination investigation into principal

Connecticut’s Attorney General William Tong is investigating a public elementary school assistant principal for potential illegal discrimination. It’s related to a Project Veritas video that appears to depict him saying he’d prefer not to hire Catholics. According to Project Veritas, the incident involved Cos Cob Elementary School Assistant Principal Jeremy Boland. He has been placed on administrative leave.

In the Project Veritas video, Boland is seen telling a woman over drinks about using age and religion, among other things, to weed out conservative applicants for teaching jobs. In one clip, Boland said he used Catholicism and age to judge if an applicant was likely to be politically conservative. He did not say how he would gain the information on a job candidate’s religious affiliation.

“Discrimination, hate, bigotry against any person and against any religion or on the basis of age or otherwise, is reprehensible and wrong,” Tong said. “This video is disturbing. And if teachers, school staff or applicants for education jobs have been illegally discriminated against for any reason, I will take action.”

The school district and the State Department of Education have announced their own probes into the video along with the attorney general’s investigation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.