Hillary Perkins, a career lawyer and conservative, has come under attack from Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri for defending the Biden administration's position on the abortion pill.
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Hilary Perkins worked at the Justice Department during the first Trump administration and worked on a number of cases involving the abortion pill mifepristone.
Since 2019, Hilary Perkins has proudly served as a career government lawyer. She takes seriously the core tenet of her job, which is to defend the administration’s position, regardless of the political views of the boss you serve. A Christian conservative hired under President Trump, she has continued to defend abortion pill access under President Biden.
But last week, three days after she became the Food and Drug Administration’s top counsel, Ms. Perkins abruptly resigned, forced to leave by a pressure campaign instigated by Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican. “Turns out this Biden attorney advocated FOR Biden’s outrageous pro-life rules in *many* cases,” he wrote on social media.
He failed to mention that Ms. Perkins had worked on the other side of a case his wife, Erin Hawley, brought to the Supreme Court over access to the mifepristone pill. Nor did he mention that in at least one other case, Ms. Perkins had worked to uphold restrictions on the drug’s availability.
The episode underscored an ongoing purge of civil servant lawyers across the government, claiming, in this case, a conservative victim. Her removal, current and former Justice Department lawyers said, is a troubling sign of how firing government lawyers while the administration is embroiled in dozens of high-stakes legal battles is weakening the department.
“Senator Hawley’s allegations against me are false,” Ms. Perkins told The New York Times. “I am not who he says I am. I am a Christian who is both conservative and pro-life, and who was simply following her oath as a career Justice Department lawyer. He should be fighting for me, not against me.”
Asked for comment, the senator's spokeswoman referred him to his previous social media posts. A representative for Ms. Hawley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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