A statement signed by 30 faculty members of Georgetown University protesting Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ speech on campus Tuesday contained multiple falsehoods.
Sessions spoke at Georgetown’s law school about free speech Tuesday, and the statement was released prior to his speech as an act of protest.
“We acknowledge our colleague’s right to invite Attorney General Sessions to speak on campus,” the letter, signed mostly by law school faculty, stated. “However, we, the undersigned, condemn the hypocrisy of Attorney General Sessions speaking about free speech.”
The letter went on to say, “Sessions’ own office is currently prosecuting Desiree Fairooz for unlawful conduct; her alleged crime is laughing for a few seconds during Sessions’ Senate confirmation hearings last January and then loudly protesting her unlawful arrest.”
However, the office prosecuting Desiree Fairooz is the U.S. Attorney for the District of Colombia, which was led at the time by Channing Phillips, an Obama appointee.
The letter also claims that Sessions has “made it clear that his Department of Justice will not pursue federal investigations into police shootings of unarmed black men.”
This, however, is also untrue. After a former South Carolina police officer plead guilty to a federal civil rights offense after killing an unarmed black man, Sessions said, “The Department of Justice will hold accountable any law enforcement officer who violates the civil rights of our citizens by using excessive force.”
The 30 professors also signed on to the notion that the Justice Department dismantled the Countering Violent Extremism program designed to investigate domestic terrorists. However, this was a Department of Homeland Security-run initiative.
Ian Prior, a DOJ spokesman, told The Daily Caller, “The Attorney General fully supports the right of faculty members to express their views, even when, as here, the assumptions underlying their viewpoints are based on false premises and inaccurate information.”