Jeffrey Epstein in 2011 (U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Justice, Wikimedia Commons)
Veteran Justice Department attorney Joseph Schnitt met a woman on the dating app Hinge, but it turns out the whole thing was a sting to get dirt about internal investigation files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Now he is suing the DOJ, claiming his First Amendment rights were violated after Attorney General Pam Bondi fired him.
In a lawsuit filed Monday, Schnitt, who previously helped oversee DOJ’s witness protection program, was terminated after activist James O’Keefe published a hidden-camera video, Politico reported. In it, Schnitt speculated that the DOJ would take a more partisan approach to releasing the files.
Congress was so concerned that the DOJ would not release all of the records that it passed a nearly unanimous bill mandating their disclosure, with only one member voting against it.
“They’ll redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal Democratic people in those files,” Schnitt said in the video.
He also claimed that the transfer of Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell to a prison “camp” that typically bars sex offenders was “offering her something to keep her mouth shut.”
One day after the comments were posted online, Schnitt was fired.
Schnitt, who is being represented by Mark Zaid, said in the the court complaint, "Had he possessed any information about the topic through his official duties, he never would have said anything. But, like most people in the United States, it was a topic he was familiar with and seemingly normal to discuss, especially within the region of Washington, D.C.”
According to Zaid, Schnitt’s having a “personal conversation during non-duty hours” is “quintessential protected speech on a matter of public concern.”
The woman who identifies herself as "Skylar" in the video is a marketing administrator at the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA.
"Skylar" said on her profile she was eager to know “what career" her perspective dates are in. The pair met for lunch in Alexandria, VA and the former DOJ attorney confessed that he found it strange she was asking so many questions about the Epstein files. He attributed the fascination to things that were in the news.
The Trump administration claims that disputes over federal employee firings must go to a civil service panel known as the Merit Systems Protection Board. However, Schnitt’s case argues the board cannot offer meaningful relief and is already struggling with an “exponentially increased caseload.”
The lawsuit also alleges that the DOJ violated his Privacy Act rights by "posting on social media an email message Schnitt sent his supervisor after O’Keefe’s group texted to say it was going public with Schnitt’s comments," Politico reported.
The email makes it clear his remarks were his “own personal comments from what I learned in the media and not from anything I’ve done at or learned via work.”
"Federal employees do not lose their privacy simply because they work for the U.S. government, nor do they forfeit their constitutional rights of free speech or to hold personal opinions,” Zaid argued in a statement about the case. “Most importantly, this administration does not have the right to fire an employee without following proper due process protections.”