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An internal Justice Department clash over safety and free speech rights centered on vandalism directed at Columbia University’s interim president.
June 4, 2025, 4:04 p.m. ET
The Justice Department, intent on pursuing a criminal case against student protesters at Columbia University, argued that graffiti with a Hamas symbol outside the home of the school’s interim president threatened her life and was comparable to a racist cross burning, newly unsealed court documents show.
The documents offer new insight into a contentious fight between political appointees in the department who told the civil rights division to open the case in late February and federal judges and career prosecutors who believed the move was risky overreach.
The records also underscore how determined the Trump administration was to press forward with a case judges viewed as weak. Justice Department leaders pushed for an investigation of a student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, but federal judges in New York rejected the administration’s efforts to get a search warrant four times, in what some veteran lawyers described as an unusually prolonged disagreement between federal prosecutors and the courts.
The release of the records came in response to a request from The New York Times, which first reported on the dispute and then filed a court motion to unseal the documents. The nonprofit news site The Intercept later joined.
The new details come at a time of heightened security concerns for Jewish Americans. Last month, two Israeli Embassy staff members were fatally shot outside the Jewish museum in Washington. On Sunday in Boulder, Colo., a man used Molotov cocktails to attack a group of people peacefully marching in support of hostages taken by Hamas. The suspects shouted “Free Palestine” at the scenes, the authorities have said.
Campus protests against Israel’s military actions in Gaza have roiled college campuses for more than a year, particularly at Columbia. The Trump administration has promised to take on such demonstrations, saying they reflect antisemitism that must be punished. A Justice Department spokesman said Wednesday that the agency “makes no apologies for our zealous efforts to prevent violent acts by antisemitic groups.”
