Reveal News: DOJ’s Civil Rights Workers Have Lost Faith in Leaders’ Integrity
Employees of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division hold a significantly dimmer view of their senior leadership under the Trump Administration than they did under President Barack Obama.
According to surveys obtained by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting through the Freedom of Information Act, employee opinions on the basic decency of their bosses have plummeted since Attorney General Jeff Sessions took over the department.
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Gerry Hebert, who spent three decades working in the Civil Rights Division, said there’s often some dissatisfaction among career staffers when White House changes hands between parties. But he said the shifts in the 2017 study were dramatic.
“It might be very frustrating for people, who were motivated by a desire to enforce and uphold civil rights law, to see those laws being undermined by the senior leadership,” Hebert said.
Hebert said that, even when he and his colleagues disagreed with the Reagan administration’s policies, they still respected them as leaders. “We didn’t feel the senior leadership totally lacked integrity or honesty,” he said. “To see the people who are there now expressing their viewpoints in these surveys, I don’t think I’ve witnessed anything this low.”