Justice Dept. examining if employees violated the rules of ethics

Justice officials said on Wednesday that they were examining allegations in a discreetly recorded video that a junior agency employee could have used government resources to continue his political protest activities.

Allison Hrabar, a paralegal in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department, was recorded during her participation in the activities of the Democratic Socialists of America, during which she discussed her efforts to find the address of a particular target. one of the group's manifestations.

The recordings were made by Project Veritas, a group of activists led by James O'Keefe who uses deceptive tactics to secretly record conversations in order to embarrass his targets. The group released a video on Wednesday that included excerpts from Hrabar talking about his activities for DSA. The video also featured a former Health and Social Services worker who sometimes claimed to receive preliminary information about strategic decisions made by the Trump administration.

[Woman with false tale approached Washington Post reporters]

In June, Hrabar participated in a protest against Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen while eating at a BC restaurant. Months earlier, Hrabar was attending a protest at a lobbyist for a private prison company.

In one of the videos, Hrabar described how they found the lobbyist's home.

"So we used the license plate," she said. "His car is parked in front of a house he owns."

When someone asked her how the group could search for license plates, she replied, "We can not do it officially," but the video does not show the rest of her answer. At another point, she said the group uses public information and research.

In another clip, another activist stated on a secretly recorded tape that Hrabar was using an expensive but publicly accessible database, in a way that might indicate that she could have used a government account to access the database. data.

Another excerpt from the video shows that she says, "What kind of luck at the DOJ, we can not really get fired."

Federal employees can be fired, although the process is often difficult and time consuming.

If Hrabar used government access to research databases to inform his protest activities, this would be a violation of federal law prohibiting federal employees from using government resources to carry out advocacy activities policy.

O'Keefe said on the group's website that the video clips were "proof that officials were disclosing confidential information and using government resources to reinforce their resistance to official government policies with which they disagreed. These videos are the embodiment of Deep State, and this is only the tip of the iceberg.

In a statement, the Justice Department called the allegations "deeply troubling" and said "the department's policy prohibits the misuse of government resources to advance personal interests. We are reviewing this immediately and have also referred this matter to the Inspector General.

Hrabar referred questions to the DSA group, which said in a statement that "James O'Keefe and the VERITAS project, very unethical, have been discredited and dismissed by investigative journalists, congressional committees and several tribunals. This campaign, which wrongly targets both the privacy of these dedicated officials and their freedom to exercise their 1st amendment, is only the latest in a long series of political attacks by a group that is desperately seeking to stay relevant. "

In response, O'Keefe stated that Veritas "is and has always been a strong supporter of the First Amendment. This video focuses only on federal officials who abuse their power for political reasons and who have already received feedback from the Department of Justice and the Department of State. "

Last year, a woman who seemed to be secretly working for Veritas approached the Washington Post by mistakenly claiming that a politician had impregnated her with a teenage girl.