> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.rangemedia.co/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # County settled with prosecutor challenger after she alleged her boss violated due process rights - URL: https://www.rangemedia.co/county-settled-with-prosecutor-challenger-after-she-alleged-her-boss-violated-due-process-rights/ - Published: 2026-10-27T21:39:31.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-27T21:39:51.000Z - Description: Danny Tarkenton, who’s running against Preston McCollam for prosecutor, had accused her supervisor in the same office of creating an unsafe working environment before she was fired. - Author: Aaron Hedge - Tags: Election 2026 The year before Danny Tarkenton filed to challenge Preston McCollam in his first election to be the Spokane County Prosecutor, he fired her from her job as a deputy prosecutor in the same office. Less than a month later, Tarkenton brought a tort claim against the county, which it settled in January for $20,000, according to documents obtained by RANGE. After the settlement, the prosecutor’s office recorded her separation as a resignation rather than a termination. The documents show McCollam terminated Tarkenton on August 25, 2025, accusing her of insubordination, after she’d alleged her supervisor violated due process rights in multiple cases and created a workplace in which she felt unsafe. She had been on the job for five months. Tarkenton had alleged that Jason Moscowitz, her boss in the civil division of the office, ignored a medical opinion she’d sought for a person who’d been involuntarily committed and used military jargon that triggered her PTSD from her time in the service. Counties [are often quick](https://wsac.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026%5Fwsac%5Fliability%5Fplight%5Ffor%5Fwashington%5Fcounties.pdf?ref=rangemedia.co) to settle such liability cases with their employees, often for much higher sums. But with little more than a week before election day, the news about Tarkenton’s firing adds fuel to the fire of an already heated prosecutor race. From Tarkenton’s perspective, the story of her exit from the prosecutor’s office and her subsequent electoral bid is one of a person standing up for her values and living up to her oath to the US Constitution. From her critics’ vantage, it’s a tale of a candidate who’d had trouble working with her superiors and is now trying to take the top post of an office she’d alienated. *The Spokesman-Review* [first revealed details about Tarkenton’s firing from the prosecutor’s office](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/oct/22/prosecutor-candidate-danny-tarkenton-was-fired-fro/?ref=rangemedia.co) on October 22, reporting that some senior employees in the office said they might quit if Tarkenton is elected. But Tarkenton’s critique of the office described a working environment that was untenable: in a September 2025 letter asking for a $25,000 settlement, Tarkenton’s lawyers alleged the county attempted to revoke a telework accommodation for a trio of health conditions. “The County later decided it would renege on the teleworking agreement despite the fact teleworking was a reasonable accommodation,” the lawyers wrote. The Spokane Community Against Racism, which endorsed Tarkenton, [critiqued](https://www.scarspokane.org/scar-endorses-danny-tarkenton-for-spokane-county-prosecutor/?ref=rangemedia.co) the *Spokesman*’s piece on October 24 in a lengthy article posted to its website. “What’s missing from the article is an actual conflict and legal analysis that led to Tarkenton to oppose her superiors and risk her career,” the article says. Tarkenton had initially told voters her “experiences inside the office compelled her to pursue” another degree — she is studying for a master’s in forensic psychology — but the documents detail a tumultuous few months during which trust broke down between Tarkenton and her bosses. She told RANGE she is only talking about her firing publicly now because two people requested records from the county that describe how she was fired, and she thought it would come out either way. “It felt unfair and dirty, and I was here to run a clean campaign as opposed to a smear campaign,” she said. Tarkenton had approached RANGE about the documents before *the Spokesman* called her about her firing. She also said she’s running “despite” this saga, not because of it. Asked for comment on this story, McCollam and the county’s civil attorney Matt Folsom both said, “The documents speak for themselves.” ### Dispute over involuntary commitment McCollam has worked for the office since 2015, but he was brand new to the top job after his predecessor Larry Haskell retired a month before Tarkenton’s firing. She was a new deputy prosecutor, months out of law school, overseeing cases in which people are forced to undergo treatment for behavioral health issues in the prosecutor’s civil division. Her problems with her superiors intensified in late July 2025, after she’d sought medical opinions from two doctors about a person who was involuntarily committed to behavioral health treatment as part of a case she’d worked on. She believed the person’s diagnosis should be reevaluated. Moscowitz would not consider those doctors’ opinions, she said, taking offense that Tarkenton had taken it upon herself to seek them. The county thought she was being insubordinate; she thought they were circumventing the person’s right to due process. Referring to the case in which Tarkenton had sought extra medical opinions, Folsom wrote in a “Written Reprimand” to Tarkenton the same day she was fired, “This is outside the scope of our division’s legal representation.” Tarkenton told RANGE she was living up to her oath to the US Constitution. Documents show Tarkenton also began to feel unsafe around Moscowitz about a month after being transferred to his civil division. She later asked for a different position in the therapeutic court. The county is barred from disparaging Tarkenton as part of the settlement. The county also agreed to record her separation as a “resignation” rather than a termination. On his campaign page on Facebook that linked the [story](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/oct/22/prosecutor-candidate-danny-tarkenton-was-fired-fro/?ref=rangemedia.co) from *the Spokesman* on Tarkenton’s firing, McCollam wrote, “I’ve absolutely done my best to run a clean campaign and let my opponent paint her own narrative. Now, the truth is coming out. The safety of our families is not a joke and criminals should not be elevated over victims.” ### Military —> criminal division —> civil division —> student —> candidate Tarkenton had started working as a deputy prosecutor for the office’s criminal division in March of 2025, in the waning months of former Prosecutor Larry Haskell’s tenure. She had worked for Haskell in a training role before she earned her law degree and passed the bar exam. But she said she soon realized that the pace of work in the office affected her health. Tarkenton is a military veteran diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, hearing loss and an autoimmune disorder, and her work seemed to be inflaming those conditions, according to the documents. She had lost 20 pounds in her short time working in the office’s criminal division, she told RANGE, and decided she needed to quit to preserve her health. She penned a resignation letter to Haskell on May 7, 2025\. In a letter to McCollam, Tarkenton’s lawyers claimed that the interim Prosecutor intercepted Tarkenton’s resignation letter, ripped it up and convinced her to instead accept a transfer to a role where her disabilities could be accommodated. So she transferred to the civil division, where she negotiated a work schedule that would allow her to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the documents say. She told RANGE she considered this to be a formal accommodation for her health problems. Her new duties were to litigate involuntary treatment cases, in which respondents can be committed to facilities that treat them for behavioral issues that can stem from mental health conditions such as addiction or depression. “Initially, things went well,” her lawyers’ letter to McCollam said. But she quickly grew uncomfortable with Moscowitz, who she said triggered her PTSD by using military jargon and not respecting her personal space. “\[H\]e often stood very close to her, particularly in places like her office where she could not easily move away,” her lawyers alleged. Moscowitz denied all Tarkenton’s allegations in an email to RANGE. After Tarkenton had sought outside medical opinions and argued with Moscowitz about it, he allegedly told her to “cease fire,” according to her lawyers’ letter. In an additional instance, Tarkenton’s lawyers alleged, Moscowitz had tried to hold her hand when he handed her a tape measure as they moved desks in their office. Her lawyers said in their letter to McCollam that he smelled of alcohol during that exchange. Tarkenton’s PTSD, her lawyers’ letter says, stemmed from “witnessing and experiencing violence and abuse from superior officers.” She found Moscowitz’s behavior similarly abusive. She eventually became so frustrated by her relationship with Moscowitz that she pulled Folsom and other county officials into a meeting on July 25, 2025 in which she described Moscowitz's alleged behavior and requested to be transferred to the therapeutic court. Tarkenton didn’t ask for an investigation. But because she had accused Moscowitz of actions that could be interpreted as human resources violations, the county initiated an investigation anyway. Tarkenton maintains she did not consent to this investigation. The county’s HR department reported after its investigation that her allegations — that she felt unsafe in the workplace, was “constantly dismissed, undermined, objectified and belittled” and was being “groomed” by Moscowitz — were “unsubstantiated.” The investigation was conducted by Senior Director of Human Resources Ashley Cloud, according to the documents, and there was not another investigation outside of the county’s. In the days after HR issued its report, the documents show, Cloud told Tarkenton that she actually *didn’t* have a disability accommodation on file — Tarkenton hadn’t filed the proper paperwork, Cloud said. But while Tarkenton offered to file the forms she needed, her lawyers alleged that the county’s response was blatant retaliation: She had been getting an accommodation all this time, and now suddenly, after she’d complained about poor treatment, they were quibbling about paperwork. They saw the statement that the county didn't have her accommodation on file as an attempt to revoke an accommodation in retaliation for what they alleged was Tarkenton’s insubordination. By this time, it seemed, Folsom and McCollam already may have been intent on firing Tarkenton. Folsom issued his two-page reprimand the day she was fired, focusing largely on Tarkenton’s interactions with her superiors rather than her work as a lawyer. He said Tarkenton “was unable to separate her feelings” from the case, she had texted a colleague that her “supervisor sucks” and accused her of a “lack of self-awareness” that led him to “lose confidence” in her ability to perform her job. The reprimand was based on his memories of his interactions with Tarkenton and Cloud’s human resources report and said Tarkenton failed “to acknowledge, or understand, her role in these interpersonal workplace dynamics.” Folsom also detailed in the reprimand an interaction with Tarkenton in which he thought she ignored him when he greeted her as she entered the office. “Last week, I passed Ms. Tarkenton at the entry to our building,” he wrote. “I said good morning. She responded. Then I asked her how she was doing today, a friendly greeting. She turned away from me, ignored me, and walked away.” Tarkenton’s lawyers, in their letter to the county, contended she had not heard him due to her hearing loss. Most substantively, Folsom’s letter accused Tarkenton of “insubordinate behavior” because she had sought the additional medical opinions regarding the case of the person who was involuntarily committed. RANGE asked Moscowitz if he had considered the doctors’ opinion, but he did not answer. Tarkenton told RANGE she was not being insubordinate, maintaining she had observed violations of due process and was simply trying to honor her [Attorney’s Oath](https://www.americanbar.org/groups/young%5Flawyers/resources/after-the-bar/professional-development/anatomy-of-our-oath/?ref=rangemedia.co) to the US Constitution. When the county confronted Tarkenton with these allegations on August 25, she told RANGE, they offered to let her resign rather than be fired. She said she asked McCollam if she would be eligible for unemployment benefits if she resigned. He replied that she would, she said in an interview. Tarkenton did not accept the offer and chose to be fired, she said, because she did not think that was true and that a resignation would have precluded her from receiving unemployment benefits. As part of the settlement, which RANGE reviewed, the county also struck the HR report from Tarkenton’s personnel file and included a non-disparagement clause, stating, “the County shall not make any statements, written or oral, that directly or indirectly disparage Ms. Tarkenton with regard to her employment at Spokane County.” In a brief phone call, Folsom told RANGE that the prosecutor’s office was bound by the settlement agreement not to discuss any information about Tarkenton’s case. But he did offer that the county stands by the findings of the human resources investigation. Though McCollam and Folsom told RANGE they would not comment on the case, Moscowitz responded to a request seeking comment for this story from his county address, saying, “I’m aware that there are some documents circulating, released as part of a public records request, regarding Ms. Tarkenton’s false allegations near in time to her termination.” In a later email, he wrote. “The independent HR investigation as well as Mr. Folsom’s \[reprimand letter\] showed her claims to be without merit. I personally found it odd how her claims changed and expanded after she retained an attorney.” Moscowitz expanded on these criticisms of Tarkenton in a long message from his personal email address, saying Tarkenton held “anger” because he’d taken her off cases. “She didn’t get the outcomes she wanted, and her spurious claims soon followed,” Moscowitz wrote. On January 12, 2026, the county agreed to settle with her, recording her separation as a “resignation” rather than a firing. The county officially denied her unsafe workplace and due-process claims. Tarkenton does not work for the prosecutor’s office anymore, but if she is elected next month, she may be leading it. She said she’s running to root out what she believes is corruption in the office. “I don’t want what they did to me to happen to someone else,” she said.