Tipsheet

Biden's Top DOJ Nominee Tries to Clean Up Her Support of the Jussie Smollett Hoax

We already know President Biden's nominee to lead the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Kristen Clarke, is anti-law enforcement radical. She's called to defund the police and has repeatedly spread false, defamatory and racially charged information about police shootings. 

But there's more to Clarke's dishonest practices. 

When actor Jussie Smollett falsely claimed he was assaulted during a blizzard by Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats, Clarke never stopped defending him and went after the police conducting an investigation. Now that she needs votes in the Senate to get confirmed, she's attempting to clarify. From the Free Beacon

Justice Department nominee Kristen Clarke last week said she regrets attacking two senators whose votes she will need for confirmation and having believed the Jussie Smollett hate crime hoax, according to a committee questionnaire obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Clarke offered the mea culpa in written responses she submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 26. Republican senators asked Clarke about combative tweets she published about Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska). They also pressed her about her social media posts from 2019 saying that Smollett was the victim of an anti-gay, anti-black hate crime. Smollett was later charged with filing false police reports after two men came forward to say the actor paid them to stage the attack.

Why does this matter? This is why

If confirmed, Clarke will oversee federal investigations into hate crimes, racial discrimination, and police brutality. Clarke has already faced scrutiny over racially charged remarks she made in college, as well as for her more recent criticism of police. She also gave seemingly inconsistent answers in her written response to the Judiciary Committee about the extent of her involvement in a 1999 conference where several cop killers were hailed as political prisoners.