Baltimore Dumps Lawyer Over Neo-Nazi Ties
By Ron Kampeas August 19, 2016
WASHINGTON — The City of Baltimore cut ties with a lawyer after an advocacy group exposed his ties to neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial groups.
The office of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake terminated its contract with Glen Keith Allen, effective immediately, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported Thursday afternoon.
The SPLC posted on its website documents showing Allen paid dues to the neo-Nazi National Alliance. He also paid a $25 fee to attend a 2007 conference of Holocaust deniers.
According to the SPLC, Allen also told Iran’s Press TV in 2012 that he believed that Israel’s Mossad spy agency was responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Allen was representing the city in a lawsuit filed by an African-American man who served 19 years on a wrongful murder conviction. Baltimore recently was the subject of a scathing U.S. Justice Department report describing police abuses against the city’s minorities.
The mayor’s office said in a statement that Allen, a veteran of DLA Piper, a major law firm, was “fully vetted at the time of his hire,” adding that the “law department does not as a general practice question its hired or contract attorneys about their political views.”
Allen declined to comment to the Baltimore Sun.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
