Gender diversity event featuring 2 Trump appointees cancelled due to DOJ interpretation of 'training'
DOJ appears to go further than the scope of Trump’s directive, which focused on banning diversity trainings that imply racism or sexism exists within the federal workforce.
Justice Department officials advised an advocacy group to cancel an event on gender diversity featuring former U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jessie Liu over a new executive order from President Donald Trump against federal trainings that suggest gender biases exist in the workplace, leaders of that group said Friday.
In an email to members Friday afternoon, DOJ Gender Equality Network leaders said officials at the department’s Justice Management Division, which provides employees with guidance on DOJ policies, on Thursday “advised DOJ GEN that we must cancel” the event in light of Trump’s executive order.
The event, titled “Addressing the DOJ Gender Leadership Gap” and scheduled for Oct. 21 during the workday, would feature Liu and acting ATF head Regina Lombardo discussing “ways to increase gender diversity in leadership positions at DOJ.” The event was co-sponsored by the civil division and environment and natural resources division diversity committees, according to a flyer for the event, and had been in the works for more than a year.
In Friday’s email, signed by the DOJ GEN board of directors, group leaders told members that they told JMD officials “that we did not believe our event would run afoul of the executive order (or OMB’s and OPM’s corresponding memos).”
“Through this event we hoped to learn more about the panelists’ backgrounds and how they achieved their career goals, solicit advice for current DOJ staff, and share recommendations to achieve greater diversity in leadership and management roles,” the email reads, noting that both Liu and Lombardo are appointees from the Trump administration.
In response to a request for comment, DOJ GEN President Stacey Young said she is not authorized to speak with the press and directed questions toward DOJ’s public affairs office. A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
Trump last month signed the executive order banning trainings that imply racism or sexism exists within the federal workforce, casting them as “promot[ing] race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating in the federal workforce or in the Uniformed Services, and not to allow grant funds to be used for these purposes.”
The Justice Department’s Justice Management Division responded earlier this month with interim guidance that suspended all diversity and inclusion trainings, as well as all programs, activities and events on the topic “that employees are required or permitted to attend while on government-paid time.” That appears to go further than the scope of Trump’s directive, which focused on trainings.
That guidance was signed by division head Lee Lofthus, a career official who has worked in DOJ since 1982 and was named assistant attorney general for administration in 2006.
Lofthus wrote in the memo that all current and future DOJ training materials must be submitted to the Office of Personnel Management for approval before they can be used. In the future, one or more political appointees at DOJ will review and preapprove any federally funded diversity and inclusion training, based on Trump’s order and guidance from OPM and the Office of Management and Budget, he said.
On Friday, the DOJ GEN leaders said they told JMD officials they believed the division’s “concerns appear to stem from its own Oct. 8 interim guidance, which materially expands the scope of the White House’s directives to include not only diversity and inclusion-related ‘training,’ but also ‘programs, events, and activities.’”
“We and other affinity groups are planning to approach DOJ leadership about the White House’s directives and DOJ’s implementation and expansion of them,” the email reads.
Young, the president of DOJ GEN, in an email sent to group members earlier this week raised the possibility that the event could be cancelled, despite what she called its “plainly inoffensive agenda and its two celebrated speakers.” She also wrote to members that the goal of the interim guidance “can only be described as censorship.”
“We question the goal and impact of asking OPM—the agency charged with creating policies to protect the entire federal workforce from a deadly pandemic—to approve all trainings as well as programs, activities and events when it should be busy with other matters,” Young wrote.
Liu, who would have appeared at next week’s event, did not immediately return a request for comment. She served as the top prosecutor in the D.C. attorney’s office after being unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2017 to the position. Previously, she worked on Trump’s transition team and as deputy general counsel at the Treasury Department.
She led the U.S. attorney’s office as it inherited cases from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, including the criminal cases against Trump associates Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, and that against former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig over allegations he misled federal investigators about his work in Ukraine while working as a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Craig, who is no longer with the firm, was acquitted by a jury last year.
Liu’s time with the Trump administration was not without its bumps: She was nominated in early 2019 to serve as associate attorney general, the No. 3 spot at DOJ, but that selection was withdrawn after some Republicans raised concerns about her conservative credentials.
Later that year, she was nominated for a top Treasury Department position. Liu stepped down from her prosecutor role before she was confirmed to the undersecretary position, but the White House withdrew her nomination shortly before she was set to appear before the Senate. Liu joined Skadden as a partner in August.
Liu was immediately succeeded by Timothy Shea, who served as D.C.’s top prosecutor as Main Justice intervened in the sentencing recommendation for Stone, leading to three career prosecutors withdrawing from the case and one prosecutor quitting DOJ entirely. Shea has since been replaced by acting U.S. attorney Michael Sherwin.
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