Top DOJ Official Exits Agency After Group Raises Concerns Over Her $1M Stanford Salary

A top official in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) quietly exited this month before a conservative group received documents on her tenure via a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Pamala Karlan left the Justice Department as the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) was set to receive a trove of information on the conditions of her employment. In addition to working for the Civil Rights Division, Karlan is also a law professor at Stanford University, where she draws an annual salary of close to $1 million, according to The New York Post.

AAF raised concerns about Karlan’s arrangement, saying the duel employment was an unacceptable conflict of interest for a federal official responsible for prosecuting misconduct and upholding the rule of law.

“As the old cliche goes, you cannot serve two masters. Pamela Karlan was a paid employee at Stanford University when she was supposed to be serving the Department of Justice,” AAF founder Tom Jones said in a statement. “Not only that, she was using her perch as the highest-paid government employee to push her radical-Soros agenda like suing states for protecting their elections and pushing trans-ideology on kindergarteners.”

“And President Biden and Merrick Garland enabled this unethical sweetheart deal to go after Americans. We’re glad that after our inquiries into this extremist, Trump-impeachment witness Pamela Karlan resulted in her quiet disappearance from the DOJ,” he added.

Karlan joined the DOJ in February 2021 through an Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement, which allows agencies to hire staff on a part-time or full-time basis from local and state governments, universities, and tribal governments. Karlan’s term was set to end in August, meaning she exited the agency several months before her term was up.

Karlan was the de facto head of the Civil Rights Division for several months until the Senate confirmed Kristen Clarke to lead the division in May 2021.

According to a February memo signed by then-acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson, “I hereby approve the detail of Pamela S. Karlan to the position of Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division, for the period from February 8, 2021, to August 22, 2022. In addition, I hereby authorize Pamela S. Karlan to exercise supervisory authority over the Civil Rights Division and to perform, to the fullest extent permitted by law, the responsibilities and functions of the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.”

While serving at the DOJ, Karlan was still an employee at Stanford University. From January 2020 through March 2021, Stanford paid Karlan $1.19 million. When she worked at the DOJ, the federal government paid her $183,100 salary to the university rather than to her directly.

Karlan was a legal expert in the proceedings for former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Trump was first impeached in December 2019 over a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump asked Zelensky to look into the cozy relationship President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had with a Ukrainian energy company.

The DOJ did not immediately respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment.

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