BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: US Attorney Thomas Albus Must Drop the Biden DOJ’s DEI Discrimination Case Against Two Brothers from St. Louis

Two brothers in St. Louis are being sued in Federal Court by the DOJ for reportedly violating the city’s discriminatory DEI policies. This case must be dropped.

Background

A century ago, St. Louis was one of the greatest cities in the world, hosting the 1904 World’s Fair and Olympics. Today St. Louis is a crime-ridden wasteland run by a corrupt Democrat machine.

When you drive through the neighborhoods between the city’s downtown and airport, you will see empty buildings and homes made of brick either boarded up, burnt down, or boarded up and then burnt down.  The inner city of St. Louis is a disaster.

Cities across the country have tried to address the problem of destroyed neighborhoods by encouraging building of residencies throughout their cities.  St. Louis is no exception.

However, under the watch of pro-BLM radical mayor Tishaura Jones, St. Louis had the highest murder rate in the country, and the steepest population loss as families left by the thousands to escape the chaos. Things are so bad that the state had to step in and take control of the city’s police force.

But what were Jones and the Democrats who run the city focused on? Not crime, or development, or quality of life – They focus on pushing Reparations, Closing prisons, Installing a “Deputy Mayor for Racial Equity”, and creating a Rube-Goldberg-machine DEI program that encourages graft and grinds development to a halt.

Even though Jones was tossed on her ear in a historic landslide defeat in April—losing by 30 points—progressive prosecutor Hal Goldsmith is still pushing to send minority builders to jail for the “crime” of trying to navigate the city’s ridiculous DEI maze.

The Case Against Brothers Sid Chakraverty and Vic Alston

A building company owned by brothers Sid Chakraverty and Vic Alston stepped up to develop housing in blighted areas of St. Louis.  Even though the brothers are themselves racial minorities and worked with a number of minority- and women-owned subcontractors on the buildings, progressive crusader Goldsmith and the DOJ indicted them on fraud charges for the alleged “crime” of not filling out their DEI reports accurately.

Let’s be clear: the city got what they wanted. Brand-new quality buildings in blighted areas. No money misused. No investors robbed. The only “victim” even alleged is the DEI bureaucracy—the St. Louis Development Corporation—charged with administering the racial quota system.

However, progressive prosecutor Goldsmith (below), and former mayor Tishaura Jones were obsessed with “racial justice” at the expense of real justice. In a similar prosecution from a few years back Goldsmith, described the DEI program as intended “to right the wrong … of years and years of racism” and that the City should be “merciless” in enforcing it.

Illegal and Unconstitutional DEI Racism

This year the city of St. Louis was forced to shut down the same DEI program Sid and Vic are being charged with misleading. Why? Because the Supreme Court has declared racial discrimination in the name of DEI unconstitutional. And the Trump DOJ is going after local governments and institutions for violating the Constitution.

In early August the newly elected Mayor of St. Louis announced that the city’s DEI policy was a great step forward –

However, the city would pause the policy as of August 4th.  Here is the mayor’s letter.

Mayor Spencer Letter to City Re W_MBE Program by Joe Ho

Progressive crusader Goldsmith, who was sidelined under the first Trump administration and seems to be hoping the new DOJ won’t notice he’s back, is still trying to jail people for not meeting the kind of racist quota system the Supreme Court just gutted in Students for Fair Admissions and that the Trump Administration is actively dismantling via executive order.

And there’s likely more Supreme Court action to come. Justice Clarence Thomas in a righteous opinion in Kousisis v. United States, made clear that DEI compliance statements can’t be used to establish fraud, not only because race is immaterial to actually building buildings but because DEI quotas (or “goals” as the city of St. Louis deceptively call them) are themselves unlawful. That means if a case like Vic’s and Sid’s comes to the Court, they are likely to get at least five votes and a win.

DOJ Civil Rights should be suing the city of St. Louis for its racist and illegal DEI policies.  Individuals like Vic and Sid who are trying to build things should not be imprisoned in a corrupt system.

Exposing DEI Incompetence and Corruption

Vic and Sid’s case looks worse and worse the more you dig into the details of how St. Louis runs its DEI maze. The “goals” the city set up for minority participation were just a bureaucratic trap, vague and constantly changing, with regulators seemingly making it up as they went along, saying “we don’t have written processes” and “whatever we say it is, that’s what it’s going to be.” How do you comply with that? You don’t. The arbitrariness is the point.

Internal communications show DEI regulators couldn’t even agree about which industry practices counted for purposes of racial point-scoring. So how were businessowners supposed to know?

The rules changed on Sid and Vic from one project to the next, in absurd and obviously racist ways. For one thing, the city started requiring a certain percentage of sub-contractors be black, specifically, and stopped counting South Asians (like Sid and Vic) as minorities even though South Asians make up less than 4 percent of the city. They also required a ridiculous “0.5 percent” of work to be done by Native Americans, even though there are zero recognized Native American tribes in St. Louis, or Missouri as a whole.

The same politicians who pushed these DEI programs have themselves been under investigation or charged with misconduct. Amazingly, Goldsmith prosecuted the three cosponsors of a city ordinance at the center of this case. Now he wants to jail others for trying to navigate their DEI labyrinth.

New mayor Cara Spencer—also a Democrat but not as rabid as Tishaura Jones— quickly tossed Jones’s handpicked “equity” obsessed leader from the St. Louis Development Corporation. 

DOJ Civil Rights should be suing the city of St. Louis and end the DEI Witch Hunt against St. Louis workers.  The new Interim US Attorney Thomas Albus should end this nightmare case. 

There is no victim, no theft, nothing missing or lost. This is a politically motivated prosecution driven by the desire to protect a collapsing DEI program, not uphold justice.

Federal law is being weaponized to enforce an unconstitutional policy—and even the City of St. Louis is backing away from it.

This is a test of whether prosecutors can criminalize disagreement with race-based compliance bureaucracy. The Supreme Court has already spoken. The Constitution—not DEI—should rule.