The Justice Department of the Trump administration has launched a civil rights investigation into the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis for its policy that considers race when giving plea bargains to defendants.
“This week, we @TheJusticeDept@CivilRights launched a racial bias pattern and practice investigation in Hennepin County Minnesota, following its recently announced policy to take race into account when making plea deals,” posted Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon on X Saturday, linking to an email sent to Hennepin County attorney Mary Moriarty.
The investigation focuses on Moriarty’s “Negotiations Policy” for cases involving adult defendants, which urges her prosecutors to use “racial identities” in their “overall analysis,” “identifying and addressing disparities based on race at decision points as appropriate.”
Dhillon said in a post published on Sunday that Lady Justice was blindfolded. Under the leadership of AG Pam Bondi and her team of lawyers at @TheJusticeDept, they will investigate and take actions wherever necessary to identify government practices that may violate our civil rights norms.
The Democrats used diversity as a way to treat Blacks and other minorities better, all under the guise that they were doing it for equity. But President Donald Trump and conservatives note that the Constitution prohibits disenfranchising Americans who are not from the Democrats’ preferred racial groups.
The trio of Pam Bondi as Attorney General, Chazelle, the acting Associate Attorney General, and Dhillon sent Moriarty a letter.
In a letter sent on Friday, they claim that Moriarty has “engaged in an ongoing pattern of practices” to deny people their rights, privileges, and immunities protected by the Constitution of the United States or its laws.
They wrote: “The investigation will be focused on whether HCAO considers race illegally in its decision-making process.”
“Please rest assured that we are not at all certain about the topic of the investigation. We welcome any information that may be relevant.”
We would greatly appreciate your cooperation with our investigation. We have resolved investigations with jurisdictions all over the country, without litigation, in our years of enforcing state and local civil rights laws involving law enforcement agencies.
Moriarty was elected in January 2023. This is three years after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, which shook the state and the presidential elections of 2020. She was reported to have been backed by George Soros and social justice activists.
“We’re coming up on the fifth anniversary of George Floyd, and I ran a campaign for a year and a half talking about addressing racial disparities in the criminal legal system,” she told the Minnesota Star Tribune on Wednesday. “I won by 16 points while talking about addressing racial disparities in the system. You simply can’t address racial disparities in the system unless you talk about them. That’s what this policy does.”