Federal Prosecutor Got Drunk on Foreign Assignment and Made ‘Racist’ Comments, Grabbed Woman: Watchdog (Exclusive)

A federal prosecutor repeatedly got drunk, made racist remarks and aggressively flirted with women while on a temporary foreign assignment, according to a Department of Justice Inspector General's report obtained by The Messenger.

The assistant US attorney’s boorish behavior during after-hours social gatherings even allegedly included insulting officials in his host country by calling it "corrupt" and a "horrible" place to live.

"I don't understand why we are training these people, they don't understand anything," he said, according to the report.

The allegations against the prosecutor were detailed in a heavily redacted, nine-page report compiled by the DOJ's Office of Inspector General.

Key details, including the prosecutor's name and the country he was working in, were blacked out in the documents released to The Messenger under the Freedom of Information Act.

The man denied wrongdoing, but the DOJ's watchdog found the witness statements to be credible.

The prosecutor supervised numerous employees, including contractors and foreign services nationals employed by the State Department, the report said.

Investigators interviewed six witnesses in the probe that was opened in 2020 and closed two years later and found the prosecutor violated both DOJ and State Department policies, the documents state.

One witness interviewed told investigators he frequently traveled with the prosecutor and witnessed him drink excessively at after-hour events and make “racist and offensive comments” to their foreign counterparts.

“These comments included, ‘you are [redacted], you don’t understand what it is to do [a] trial,’” the documents state.

The same witness told investigators he attended a happy hour with the prosecutor, where he engaged in “persistent, unwanted flirting” with an unnamed woman.

The advances caused her to ask for help and say, “she did not want to be alone with [redacted] because he was drunk and his advances bothered her,” the documents state.

Another witness told investigators the prosecutor was demeaning to his subordinates and inappropriate to their foreign counterparts.

On one occasion at a judges’ delegation, he “became verbally abusive to [redacted] judges, because he believed they were wasting too much time buying coffee,” according to the report. Several judges later reported the incident.

The prosecutor was also once warned by another official to “stop snapping his fingers at [redacted] staff because it was culturally insensitive” on another occasion, the report states.

A local State Department employee who worked with the man at a foreign training seminar also said he tried to get her attention after a restaurant dinner by aggressively grabbing her chin as she talked with others.

The woman told another attendee that she felt “disrespected and betrayed because I'm not used to people grabbing my face,” the documents state.

"He was under…he had alcohol," the woman added. "So, he was acting different than he usually does."

The man — who denied any wrongdoing but refused to take a lie-detector test — was recalled to the US after his actions were reported but it's unclear what, if any, further discipline was imposed.

He specifically denied forcefully grabbing the State Department employee and said he continued his friendship with the woman after the alleged incident and she never confronted him about it.

The Inspector General’s Office referred the matter to DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which declined to open an investigation, the documents show.

They also provided the report to the Executive Office of US Attorneys and DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to request for comment.