Durbin Discusses Justice Department Priorities With Kristen Clarke, Nominee For Assistant Attorney General For DOJ Civil Rights Division

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), incoming Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today met with Kristen Clarke, President Joe Biden’s nominee be the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division. During their Zoom call, Durbin and Clarke discussed the importance of working closely together on DOJ priorities, including reinvigorating DOJ’s protection of Americans’ civil rights and voting rights, combating hate crimes and domestic terrorism, and policing reform.

“While the former President was disrespecting the Constitution, undermining democratic institutions, spreading hate, and inciting insurrection, he also reduced the DOJ Civil Rights Division to a shell of its former self.  Kristen Clarke is a Justice Department veteran who has the skills, experience, and tenacity to revitalize the Civil Rights Division and renew its commitment to protecting civil rights and ensuring equal justice under the law,” Durbin said.

A photo of Durbin’s Zoom call is available here.

Clarke has served as the President and Executive Director of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law since 2015.  She previously served in the New York State Attorney General’s Office from 2011-15 as director of the office’s Civil Rights Bureau.  From 2006-11 she worked at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund where she focused on voting rights.  From 2000-06, she served as a trial attorney in the DOJ Civil Rights Division where she worked on voting rights and criminal matters.  A New York native and daughter of Caribbean immigrants, she received her A.B. from Harvard and her J.D. from Columbia.  

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