A former prosecutor ripped apart the Trump Justice Department's claim that its new civil rights lawyers rank among the nation's finest.
Lawyer and journalist Katie Phang, a former Miami-Dade prosecutor, picked through the records of new hires in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division on Wednesday's episode of "The Katie Phang Show," drawing on a New York Times report. The division is run by Harmeet Dhillon, President Donald Trump's pick to lead it.
Phang first played a June clip of Dhillon addressing the division’s staffing crunch. “Three-quarters of the lawyers in the department quit,” Dhillon said. “We’ve now hired back over 100 lawyers... I am proud to say that I’ve attracted the best and brightest to the Civil Rights Division.”
Phang then ran through the hires, starting with Barry Arrington, acting chief of the division's new Second Amendment unit and, per the Times, a high-profile opponent of the theory of evolution and same-sex marriage.
David Michael Levin, one of two DOJ lawyers who approached a Minneapolis polling place during Minnesota's August primary, twice hacked into the Lee County, Florida, election system in 2015 and 2016. He pleaded to two misdemeanors and served 20 days in jail. A Florida judge also ordered him in August to pay more than $200,000 after finding fraudulent misrepresentation and civil conspiracy.
"But sure, Harmeet, best and brightest, right?" Phang said.
David Vandenberg, a former El Paso prosecutor now working in elections litigation, faces animal neglect charges and a lawsuit from a mother who accused him of sideswiping her car with her two children inside, flashing his badge and fleeing. Asked by the Times whether he should have been hired, his former supervisor first said no, then amended it to "hell no."
Khalil Quinan, who Phang confirmed came from her old Miami-Dade office, stepped aside from a high-profile murder prosecution after a judge found he had viewed and shared files marked as privileged attorney-client communications.
For Phang, the hires mark a stunning fall for an office she once saw as the peak of a prosecutor's career. "It was the brass ring for many of us," she said. "Normally it's just an embarrassment of riches, but now it's just embarrassment."
She warned that division lawyers turning up at the polling places should alarm voters ahead of November's midterms. "Yes, you should be concerned that these are the lawyers from the Civil Rights Division that are meddling," she said.
"The fish rots from the head down," Phang said. "How far they have fallen."
