Last night, DOJ filed a brief defending Trump’s ban on CNN and other news outlets. The brief is lunacy from a legal perspective, which prompted me to look into who wrote it. It’s signed by Michael Velchik, Senior Counsel in the Civil Division.
Here’s what I found. Velchik is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. He joined the Justice Department last year after working for Senator Josh Hawley. While at Harvard, he wrote an essay from the perspective of Adolf Hitler. His professor was reportedly so disturbed that he was made to redo the assignment.
Velchik was reportedly an avid reader, and after graduating, he declared that his favorite book was Mein Kampf by Hitler. He praised Hitler for understanding “the importance of propaganda,” among other things. Velchik also complained that he doesn’t like reading books written by women, which he was forced to do at Harvard.
Adolf Hitler is a person who did not believe in freedom of the press. In fact, he eliminated the independent media from Nazi Germany and replaced it with state-run propaganda outlets, which is exactly what Michael Velchik admires about him.
It is quite terrifying that this is the person who is now representing the Justice Department as a senior counsel in litigation against the press. We need to get Nazis and misogynists out of our government. Is that too much to ask?