Kristen Clarke | Senate Democrats, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Kristen Clarke | Senate Democrats, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The Senate confirmed highly controversial Kristen Clarke’s nomination as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice on May 25 despite one group alleging the FBI failed to properly conduct a background investigation.
Police responded to domestic violence calls to Clarke’s Maryland home on six occasions, Thomas Jones, founder of the American Accountability Foundation, told Maryland State Wire. Her ex-husband, Reginald Avery, told AAF the FBI never questioned him.
“She's going to hold a top-secret clearance, she's going to have access to sensitive information. Everyone who holds a clearance gets these thorough background investigations. Not interviewing ex-spouses is a glaring failure,” Jones said.
Clarke has been forward-leaning on defunding the police, having written an article in Newsweek that calls for reducing spending at police departments, he said. She helped organize a conference that defended Mumia Abu Jamal, who fatally shot a Philadelphia police officer in the face in the 1980s.
"As part of that conference, she circulated an article that compared the police to the Klu Klux Klan and said that the police are now an instrument of racist oppression,” Jones said.
What makes this more problematic is that Clarke will be in charge of investigating police departments in cities like Minneapolis and Louisville on how they behaved in the wake of everything that happened last summer, he said.
“You have somebody who has a really a strong anti-police bias, serving as the DOJ’s point person on overseeing the police,” Jones said.
Clark's, from Maryland, nomination has raised some eyebrows due to her past involvement in defending those who have killed officers and domestic terrorists.
Some have noted she has a past of rushing to judgment against police without a full set of facts.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) opposed Clarke's nomination, calling her "completely unfit" due to her "brazen disdain for law enforcement" and her "calls to defund the police" in a press release.
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