The intern stated that those employees also told him about disparaging comments by other career CRT career employees who questioned why he would work on the case and insinuated that he was assigned to the matter because he was Black and that he had been used as a “token.” The intern told the OIG that he understood that those employees included Pat Tellson, an attorney in the Voting Section, and Ellen Sydney, an attorney in a different CRT section who used to work in the Voting Section.

<sup>The intern stated that he understood from one or more Voting Section employees that Sydney had stated words to the effect that: “They only wanted you down there because you are a black face. How would it look for four white men down there prosecuting all these black people? They wanted you down there to show that it is not white against black. They used you because you were black and they needed a black face.” The intern said that similar comments were directed at his mother, who was employed in a different component of the Division. For instance, the intern stated that one of the Voting Section employees approached his mother and said something to the effect that: “They got [the intern] down there working on this case on behalf of white voters. Why did you let them go down there?”96 According to the intern, he perceived a broader “whisper campaign” in the office about his participation in the Noxubee case after returning from the trial, and he told us that this campaign continued for roughly one year.

The intern told the OIG that the remarks angered and insulted him by suggesting that he was duped into working on the matter. He stated the assertion that he was being used by the Noxubee team was incorrect, noting that he requested to work on the case numerous times. He said the comments affected his ability to do his job because they made him feel ostracized in the office. He said that as a result he kept to himself and stayed in his cubicle to avoid questions about the case. The intern stated that, although he never felt like he was a “token” while working on the case, those statements made him feel as though his participation in the case was wrong.

Sydney denied to the OIG that she made disparaging comments about the intern and his involvement in the Noxubee trial, but stated that she witnessed comments of that nature, including that Tellson had called the intern something to the effect of a “turncoat” in front of his mother. Tellson told the OIG that she believed the intern was being used in the Noxubee matter so that “they could have a black face at counsel table,” but did not recall making comments about the intern’s involvement in the trial. Tellson stated, however, that she told the intern’s mother that it was “just wrong” that the</sup>

King also interviewed the intern’s mother about the incident and, according to King’s contemporaneous memorandum of the interview, the intern’s mother said that Sydney made statements to her to the effect that the reason her son was working on Noxubee was that the trial team “need[ed] a black face” at their reverse-discrimination trial. The mother also told King that two career non-attorneys later made similar statements to her. The mother told King that she declined to file a formal complaint about these incidents at the time the comments were made because she thought the people were just “being nosy.” In an e-mail about the incidents to the attorney’s supervisor, however, King described the conduct as “quite egregious.”

The OIG also uncovered e-mails in which current and former Voting Section attorneys criticized and mocked Coates’s work on the Noxubee case. For instance, in an e-mail sent to four former Voting Section attorneys after the Noxubee complaint had been filed but before the trial began, Sydney referred to Coates as a “klansman.” Likewise, a non-attorney employee in the Voting Section wrote in an e-mail to a Section attorney: “[P]ersonally i think that the architects of the [Voting Rights Act] and those who fought and died for it are rolling over in their graves with that perversion of the act … im sorry, but [White people] are NOT covered for a reason.” During the course of the Noxubee trial, a group of current and former Section attorneys exchanged e-mails that celebrated perceived setbacks for the Department’s case and appeared to express hope that Coates and the Department would lose the Noxubee trial.

^{We found as a result of our e-mail review that after the Noxubee case concluded, current and former Section attorneys who were opposed to the case continued to make derisive comments about Coates and his prosecution of the matter.98 We found no evidence that Division leadership or Coates were made aware of these particular messages at the time, although Coates has on numerous occasions stated that he was the subject of overt hostility in the Section because of his role in the Noxubee case.}