The Trump administration's Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the Minneapolis-area Hennepin County Attorney's Office for policy to consider race in giving plea deals to defendants.
"This week we @TheJusticeDept @CivilRights opened a racial discrimination pattern and practice investigation into Hennepin County, Minnesota's recently announced policy of taking race into consideration in plea offers," Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon posted Saturday on X, linking to the email sent to Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.
The investigation homes in on Moriarty's "Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants," which implores her prosecutors' "overall analysis" to consider "racial identity" when cutting plea deals, "identifying and addressing racial disparities at decision points, as appropriate."
"Lady Justice is blindfolded for a reason," Dhillon added in a Sunday post on X. "Under the leadership of @AGPamBondi and her team, @TheJusticeDept lawyers will investigate and take action wherever necessary to identify government practices that may run afoul of our civil rights norms."
Democrats have tried to use diversity to give better treatment to Blacks and minorities, under the guise of equity, but President Donald Trump and conservatives note the Constitution has outlawed disenfranchising Americans not in the Democrats' favored racial pools.
The letter to Moriarty was sent by the trio of Attorney General Pam Bondi, acting Associate Attorney General Chad Mizelle, and Dhillon.
They allege in Friday's letter that Moriarty's policy has effectively "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."
"In particular, the investigation will focus on whether HCAO engages in illegal consideration of race in its prosecutorial decision-making," they 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."
Moriarty took office in January 2023, three years after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis roiled the city, state, and the 2020 presidential election. She reportedly was backed by social justice warriors and megadonor George Soros money.
"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."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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