New Whistleblower Disclosure Suggests DOJ May Have Covered Up Public Safety Harms Caused by Dismantling of Hate Crime Prevention Office

Washington, D.C. (March 12, 2026)— Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi demanding that she immediately address an alarming whistleblower disclosure provided by a former senior career official at the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Community Relations Service (CRS)—the federal agency established by the Civil Rights Act to combat hate crimes—revealing that DOJ appears to have misled a federal court by failing to turn over internal warnings that dismantling CRS was legally indefensible and operationally impossible.

The whistleblower disclosure affirms that CRS leadership repeatedly cautioned senior Trump Administration officials that reducing the office from 57 employees to a single person was not viable under the Civil Rights Act, the Church Arson Prevention Act, and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. DOJ nonetheless went ahead with dismantling the agency, and omitted to include the warnings in the Administrative Record it produced in federal court. 

“CRS was built for exactly the kind of moment we are living through—before the Administration dismantled it, CRS had a full-time specialist in Minnesota and could have surged additional conciliators from across the Midwest within hours. CRS could have been on the ground with impartial mediators as crisis unfolded in Minneapolis and could have served as the confidential peacemakers Congress designed them to be,” Ranking Member Raskin wrote.

Under the federal government’s own contingency plan, CRS is classified as a “public safety” component exempt from reduction-in-force guidance put forth by the Trump Administration and Office of Management and Budget (OMB). However, according to the whistleblower, OMB ordered the elimination of CRS—a claim that contradicts DOJ court filings that assert OMB played no role in the decision to dismantle the office.

Today, CRS exists in name only. DOJ reinstated nine employees in February but barred them from performing CRS work, instead reassigning them to unrelated roles. Likewise, 22 additional employees pulled from different offices to supposedly staff CRS have received no indication they will ever perform CRS work.

The insider account heightens the concerns that 90 Members of Congress expressed in an amicus brief filed last year in the federal lawsuit Ethical Society of Police v. Bondi, opposing the elimination of CRS and its conflict resolution services.

“[T]he 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,” Ranking Member Raskin wrote.

Ranking Member Raskin demands an immediate briefing from the Department of Justice on the circumstances surrounding CRS’s destruction, current operating procedures within the office, and ongoing efforts to fulfill DOJ’s statutory obligations in the absence of CRS.

Click here to read the letter.

Click here to read the disclosures.