The Trump Justice Department has launched a civil rights investigation into the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office (HCAO), accusing it of implementing a racially discriminatory charging policy that may violate the Constitution. At the center of the probe is a new internal directive instructing prosecutors to factor in “racial identity” when making plea deals, a policy that was leaked to local reporters and media outlets.
According to a letter dated May 2 and signed by U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet K. Dhillon, the DOJ is opening a formal investigation to determine:
“whether the HCAO is engaged in a pattern or practice of depriving persons of rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. In particular, the investigation will focus on whether the HCAO engages in the illegal consideration of race in its prosecutorial decision-making.”
Read the full letter here:
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. More to come. pic.twitter.com/VLn1998Obl
— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) May 4, 2025
The Department cites internal policy language adopted by HCAO directing line prosecutors to actively include race in their charging decisions. The memo in question, titled Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants, reads like a roadmap for race-conscious justice.
“The HCAO recently adopted a discriminatory Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants directing prosecutors to consider racial identity when formulating plea offers,” the DOJ wrote, noting the policy states: “‘racial identity . . . should be part of the overall analysis,’ and that prosecutors, ‘should be identifying and addressing racial disparities at decision points, as appropriate.’”
In other words, prosecutors were told to weigh race not merely as a contextual data point, but as a factor in plea bargains. That directive has now drawn the attention of the Justice Department, which is treating the matter as a potential pattern-and-practice violation under 34 U.S.C. § 12601.
The Civil Rights Division emphasized this will be a wide-ranging investigation:
“Our investigation, however, will include a comprehensive review of all relevant HCAO policies and practices that may involve the illegal consideration of race in prosecutorial decision-making.”
While no legal conclusions have been made, DOJ officials signaled urgency and a desire for cooperation:
“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 have worked with jurisdictions of all sizes across the nation to resolve investigations, usually without contested litigation.”
The investigation will be overseen by the DOJ’s Special Litigation Section, which will coordinate directly with Hennepin County officials.
“The Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section will oversee this investigation. It will be in contact with you 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.”
The policy first came to public light after it was leaked and reported by local media, including The Minnesota Star Tribune, which noted that the DOJ investigation follows public backlash and legal concern over the explicit inclusion of race in prosecutorial decision-making.
In response, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty defended the policy, telling The Minnesota Star Tribune:
Moriarty told the Minnesota Star Tribune last week that the policy is constitutional and a necessary corrective to historical racism in the criminal justice system. She said asking prosecutors to consider potential unconscious racial bias at key moments was different than asking prosecutors to treat defendants differently based on race.
The implications of this case could extend well beyond Minneapolis. If DOJ concludes the HCAO’s practices violate the Constitution, other jurisdictions and government bodies incorporating race into their official decision-making, whether in hiring, charging, or enforcement, could face similar scrutiny next.
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Progressives have an axiom which states that all unequal results are due to racism. As there are proportionately more blacks in prison, more blacks disciplined in school, etc… etc…. progressives conclude this obviously is due to systematic racism. They don’t even consider that it might be that more blacks misbehave, a much more straightforward explanation that they can’t understand and automatically reject. Their minds are broken and no amount of logic or data will ever change their opinions.
Yes, everything should be based on race:
Police should consider skin color in determining whether to make an arrest, DA’s whether to charge, judges whether to set low bail and juries whether the glove fits or not.
School teachers have been doing this for years to ensure all their students graduate. And colleges have found it works for well for admissions to get the right amount of diversity so that students can graduate and go on to be in tv commercials which depict race in every single one.
This is exactly the sort of action needed to combat the continued use of race as a basis for putting a thumb on the scale.
This brazenly lawless and racist policy reflects both the Dhimmi-crats general, absurdist ethos that posits that it’s allegedly racist to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate criminals “of color;” to hold them legally responsible for their predations and criminal actions.
It also is consistent with the example set by vile narcissist-incompetent-dunce, Obama, and his equally vile “wingman,” the execrable Eric Holder, during their wretched tenures in the White House and at DOJ, respectively.
Recall the infamous instance of “Black Panther” thugs clad in paramilitary garb, brandishing truncheons, intimidating voters at a Pennsylvania polling location. Obama’s DOJ (Civil Rights Division) chose not to prosecute, contriving some idiotic and unavailing excuse, but, manifestly because the perpetrators were black — and, as we all know, in the Dhimmi-crat mindset and playbook, civil rights laws do not apply to punish black violators and benefit non-black victims.
When hauled before Congress to explain this egregious and indefensible instance of racist non-enforcement of civil rights laws, Obama’s equally vile “wingman,” the execrable Eric Holder, lamely posited that the conduct complained-of didn’t rise to the level of that which blacks had suffered, during the Civil Rights era — as if that arbitrary and subjective “standard” was somehow relevant to the colorblind enforcement of federal civil rights laws, for the benefit of all Americans.
Not being that conversant in Minnesota geography, I had to look up that county. Surprise, surprise… it’s the one encompassing the Twin Cities, AKA Little Somalia.
Will people actually start going to prison for this insanity?
Surely you jest.
How did Minnesota of all places turn into such a woke sh*thole?
It’s not MN in general, it’s the big blue cities in MN —
just like everywhere else.
Clinton, Bush, and Obama flooding a single small area with 40,000 Somali “refugees.”
‘Nuff said.
It is true that the world’s largest population of Somali’s outside of Somalia is in Minnesota, and largely concentrated in the “Little Mogadishu” area of southern Minneapolis, but that’s not actually the reason that the Twin Shitties are failing and dragging the rest of the state down with it. The reason is the voters of Hennepin (Mpls) and Ramsey (St. Paul) counties. They have voted DFL (“Democrat Farmer/Labor”, aka, Dem-wingers) for the past 80 years. Minneapolis’ last Rep-wing mayor was in office for something like 24 hours back in the 70’s for some bizarre reasons, but they haven’t had an actual Rep-wing mayor since the 40’s.
We grew up in that state and would never have left it had the populace and politicians retained a shred of sanity. Instead, they coldly and deliberately destroyed the rule of law, including property rights, in favor of collectivist/statist/authoritarianism. Where we lived in the Heart of the Hive™ (Southwest Mpls) was Ilhan “Marry Your Brother” Omar’s district, handed to her in perpetuity by Keith Muhammed X. Elllison. Three-fourths of our neighbors voted for that rancid piece of Sharia-implementing garbage. Even though I was a direct eyewitness to vote fraud in our neighborhood (too long a story for this post), the only reason the Dem=wingers did that was to sway the overall state election, by wiping out any possible influence of the rest of the state outside of the 7-county metropolitan area. They already had the votes by an overwhelming majority (3-to-1 ratio) in our old neighborhood.
We got the heck out of there after I retired. There were businesses burned and vandalized in 2020 just a block away from where our former house was located. Apparently Minnesotans are dumber than flatworms, because even a flatworm will turn away from a pain stimulus. Minnesotans have learned NOTHING, and those cities are going to utterly disintegrate and burn as a result.
Blackwing, do you remember the fawning 1973 TIME magazine cover story “The Good Life in Minnesota”? I was in grad school there at the time and stayed and worked another six years after I got out. The story’s author, Lance Morrow, wrote on its 50th anniversary (and just before he died) that he couldn’t possibly write anything like that today.
If I recall correctly that was the one with “Spendy Wendy” (Gov. Wendell Anderson – D) on the cover holding up a teeny-tiny Northern. Hey, at least he caught a frickin’ fish.
As Gabby Johnson said, “I wuz born here, an’ I wuz raised here, and dadgummit, no sidewindin’, hornswogglin’ cracker-crocker gonna drive me outen here!” (Or some other authentic frontier gibberish of similar nature.)
Well, it’s not true. The native-born Minnesnowtan communists managed to drive me and my wife right out of our state…and right into a state with no income tax, and a cost-of-living about 2/3’s that of MN. Car and house insurance are about half of MN, mostly because there’s almost no theft. We would never have left if not for the deranged collectivists attempting to run the state…they have only succeeded in running it into the ground.
Now that our MN carry permits have expired we ain’t goin’ back for NUTHIN’.
This is why:
Somali Population by State 2025
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has directed her staff to implement a blatantly racist and un constitutional policy. She should be immediately removed from office.
She needs to be put in a cell for a few years. That’s the only way she’ll learn a lesson.
Granting that she should, the odds of it happening in a Leftist ruled state are somewhere between zero and none.
Subotai Bahadur
Genuinely nuke Minneapolis.
harmeet is a champ
Entitlement is never a good look.
The fact is that race is already considered at every step in the administration of justice, at least unconsciously. You can’t tell me that every cop doesn’t wonder, when making an arrest, whether he or she will end up in jail.
Can they not understand that letting this criminal go, here, in the present day, because someone 10, 20 or 50 or 100 years ago might not have gotten a fair shake does nothing for that person, they’ve already endured that –and lets an actual criminal out among innocents?
The past is the past. The only way to make up for it is to see that it never repeats itself.
I’ve joked in the past that leftist DA’s, when pressed to both lower the percentage of minorities arrested and convicted and also maintain some semblance of fighting crime, might resort to arresting and prosecuting white people randomly. It appears we may be approaching that point.
So when I get robbed by one of Minneapolis’s many feral youth groups when I visit next month, I should ask prosecutors to consider potential unconscious racial bias at key moments. Thanks, I did not know I was the problem.
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