Whistleblowers Say Trump Administration Imposed ‘Strict Gag Order’ On Fair Housing Attorneys

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Five civil rights attorneys who were reassigned from their fair housing work at the United States Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD), claim that President Donald Trump and his administration retaliated against them for enforcing the Fair Housing Act. 

On September 22, the whistleblowers sued HUD and its secretary, Scott Turner. After agency leaders recognized there were legal obstacles to eliminating the Office of Fair Housing entirely, they allegedly targeted the attorneys and forced them to leave the office “against their will.”

The attorneys in the Office of Fair Housing further allege that they have been “subject to a strict gag order that prohibits them from engaging in any ‘external communications’ without political leadership approval for each individual matter. That approval has been granted only rarely, and requests often linger for months without action.”

Political leadership “conveyed” the gag order “verbally,” and with no written clarification or guidance, which has led HUD’s legal office to interpret the directive as a broad prohibition on any communication with “any party to an investigation or any federal agency, including the Department of Justice.” As such, attorneys feel they are restricted from providing advice on standard legal matters that are typically part of enforcing the law against housing discrimination.

According to the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which frequently represents government whistleblowers, a gag order is “any policy, form, or agreement that restricts or discourages a federal employee from communicating information either within or outside of their agency.”

“These orders may appear as written nondisclosure agreements, official email communications, agency-wide directives, or even verbal instructions from a manager. Regardless of form, if an order restricts lawful whistleblowing disclosures, it can be considered unlawful,” GAP contends. 

Palmer Heenan, Paul Osadebe, Julia Dykstra, Ashley Vazquez, and Hannah Gordon each worked on fair housing enforcement, yet in the past months, they have faced involuntary reassignments that took them away from their work. 

Osadebe told The Real News in an exclusive interview that “every avenue” that they’re supposed to have to perform their “crucial work is being dismantled piece by piece from political interference.” Officials are even allegedly removing “complaints that have already been investigated and where we’ve already found that someone” engaged in discrimination. They’re “removing settlements.”

Attorneys are finding their ability restricted to “talk with complainants or other parts of HUD or other federal agencies,” Osadebe shared. “We’re talking about restricting our ability to make sure that federal funding is spent without facilitating discrimination or allowing discrimination to happen.”

Heenan outlined in the same interview how the gag order is allegedly being imposed on attorneys. 

“When the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity decides that there’s reasonable cause to believe that discrimination has occurred, our office is the one who prosecutes that complaint,” Heenan said.

The attorneys are supposed to talk to respondents and seek justice in the event of “terrible discrimination,” and the Office of Fair Housing Enforcement is typically involved in determining that there is reasonable cause for a discrimination complaint. Yet since Trump returned to the White House, they have not been able to perform this duty. 

“That makes it almost impossible to adequately prosecute these cases. And these are cases that affect real people’s lives. These are people who have been put in physical danger, who have been called terrible racial epithets, who are unhoused because of discriminatory acts that their landlord might’ve undertaken, who can’t get a mortgage because they were charged more than somebody with a different background or a different skin color,” Heenan declared. 

“These are people who deserve justice. And whether or not they deserve it, by statute, the federal government is required to give them justice. That’s what the Fair Housing Act requires. And we’re not able to do that if we’re told you can’t talk to anybody.” 

Heenan added, “We’re the ones prosecuting the cases, and yet we can’t talk to anyone at all.”

Not everyone must abide by this alleged gag order. Osadebe said attorneys in the office who are tasked with defending the actions of HUD or actions by personnel are able to speak freely. “It’s the parts that help people, the parts that help your average American out there, those are the parts that are restricted.”

The five whistleblowers maintain that the gag order they face was imposed to weaken the enforcement of fair housing laws. “At least 115 federal fair housing cases have been halted or closed entirely since Trump took office,” they claim, and “multiple channels for reporting housing discrimination have been shut down.” 

Immediately after Trump’s inauguration, a gag order was imposed on 13 divisions of the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the memo that was issued indicated it would expire by February 1. 

Staffers at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also faced "a Trump administration gag order prohibiting USAID staffers from speaking with people outside their agency.” The directive restricting speech was in place as the Trump administration dismantled USAID. 

Trump favored gag orders during his first term. As the Washington Post previously recounted, "In 2018, a watchdog agency found that the Department of Health and Human Services broke the law with three gag orders issued during the first half of Trump’s tenure.

"In 2019, the president’s doctors and medical staff at Walter Reed were made to sign nondisclosure agreements, as NBC and The Washington Post reported last week. The suppression of scientists’ speech continued through the coronavirus response," the Post further noted.

“We swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect the public—not to rubber-stamp a political agenda,” Osadebe stated in late August. “What’s happening at HUD right now is a direct attack on civil rights, public safety, and the rule of law. We’re speaking out because silence would make us complicit.”

Watch The Real News Network's full interview with the two HUD whistleblowers here.