A former senior career Justice Department official has accused the Trump administration of illegally dismantling the agency's only office dedicated to preventing hate crimes and community violence, then lying about it to a federal judge.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, fired off a scathing letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday, demanding answers after Democrats received the explosive protected disclosure about the DOJ's gutting of its Community Relations Service.
The insider account alleged that CRS leaders sent formal warnings to top DOJ brass saying that slashing the agency from 57 employees down to one was flatly illegal under the Civil Rights Act, the Church Arson Prevention Act, and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Those warnings allegedly fell on deaf ears, the official alleged.
The whistleblower also claimed that Trump's DOJ deliberately omitted those warning memos from court records and a federal judge had to force officials to hand them over. Even then, DOJ allegedly applied heavy redactions to bury the damning internal dissent, the documents said.
Furthermore, DOJ's claimed "restoration" of CRS appears to be pure theater. The employees brought back reportedly haven't been allowed to do any actual CRS work, the documents allege.
Raskin demanded a full briefing by March 27, writing in a letter to Bondi, "the Administration systematically and unlawfully destroyed the agency known as 'America’s Peacemaker.' This is an act of sabotage against the safety and civil rights of the American people, carried out in total defiance of Congress and concealed from the courts."