Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Cleveland and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, along with Cleveland FBI agents, were seeking to determine primarily whether they had violated Rice’s civil rights, the people said. “Nobody thought there was a civil rights case, as horrible as the entire thing was and remains,” one person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. ADADBut officials in the Civil Rights Division disagreed that a case could not be substantiated, according to people familiar with the matter. That case had spawned significant disagreement, dating back to the Obama administration, between prosecutors in the Civil Rights Division and those in the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. But these are very much the exceptions, not the rule.”The complaint alleges that Barr’s speech was circulated among civil rights prosecutors, and had a chilling effect.

Source: Washington Post October 30, 2020 21:07 UTC