The Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened a civil rights investigation into a directive by Minnesota’s Hennepin County Attorney’s Office (HCOA) that prosecutors take race into consideration when striking plea deals with criminal defendants.
In a letter dated May 2, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon, told Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty they will investigate if her office “engaged in a pattern of practice of depriving persons of rights, privileges or immunities secured or protect by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
The investigation follows Moriarty’s recently adopted “Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants.”
The policy urges prosecutors to consider race when formulating plea offers, stating that “racial identity… should be part of the overall analysis,” and that prosecutors “should be identifying and addressing racial disparities at decision points, as appropriate.”
Backed by far-left financier George Soros, Moriarty, as Breitbart News has reported, is no stranger to controversy. The county office includes the city of Minneapolis.
In April, Moriarty faced backlash for not charging a 33-year-old Minnesota state government employee after he admitted to damaging six Tesla vehicles in a politically motivated vandalism spree in March.
Now the issue appears to be racial favoritism, which Moriarty’s office apparently considers politically correct, according to critics.
The Justice Department letter, also authored by Acting Associate Attorney General Chad Mizelle, stated, “In particular, the investigation will focus on whether HCAO engages in illegal consideration of race in its prosecutorial decision-making.”
The attorneys also wrote:
Please be assured that we have not reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation. We will consider all relevant information, and we welcome your assistance in helping to identify what that might be. We would appreciate your cooperation in our investigation. In our years enforcing civil rights statutes involving state and local law enforcement agencies, we have worked with jurisdictions of all sizes across the nation to resolve investigations, usually without contested litigation.
The Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Sections will oversee the investigation, the letter added. It stated the Justice Department will be in contact with Moriarty “shortly to set up a mutually agreeable date and time to discuss the parameters of this investigation, including the scope of information that we will be seeking from you.”
Moriarty was elected among a wave of progressive district attorneys who took office following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests and riots, Fox News reported.
Like other prosecutors backed by Soros political action groups around the U.S., Moriarty has faced fierce backlash as critics questioned her decisions to seek lighter sentences for violent crimes in some cases and to divert more people to programs rather than jail.
Similar lenient policies have resulted in recall attempts and election opposition for others in the Soros slate, including Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón, who was soundly beaten last year by former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman.
Lowell Cauffiel was honored by Columbia University’s prestigious Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for his series on racial conflict in Detroit in the 1980s. He’s the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
