One of President Donald Trump’s nominees, who was up for the federal job of funding police departments across the country, refused Wednesday to apologize for calling cops “dumb as dirt.”
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Konstantinos Ligris, Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, faced a barrage of questions at his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the committee’s ranking member.
The Office of Justice Programs oversees hundreds of millions in federal grants to police departments and criminal justice agencies nationwide.
“You tweeted ‘s-ck it up, bro’ in response to a post discussing Senator [Tim] Kaine’s [(D-VA)] objections to the pardoning of January 6 rioters,” Durbin said, reading from Ligris’s social media record. “You referred to Governor [Tim] Walz [(D-MN)] of Minnesota as ‘Tampon Tim.’ You referred to Congresswoman [Ilhan] Omar [(D-MN)] as ‘not an American.’ You called Senator [Susan] Collins [(R-ME)] a fraud.”
“Legris referred to police officers as ‘dumb as dirt,'” Durbin continued, quoting Ligris’ 2024 post. “And now you’re seeking a position to work with police departments all over the United States — you’re going to be allocating federal funds. How could you do that?”
“I routinely, every 90 days, purge tweets for cybersecurity purposes,” Ligris replied.
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“I can see why,” Durbin fired back.
When Ligris added only that he wasn’t familiar with some of the posts, Durbin pressed harder.
“That’s it?” he demanded. “At least address the ‘dumb as dirt’ comment. Say something! Apologize to them!”
Ligris refused to budge.
“I do not believe that law enforcement is ‘dumb as dirt,'” he said. “I would like to take a look at the entire post in its context.”
“You better set some time aside,” Durbin countered, “because there are so many posts — hundreds of posts. It just seems to me inconsistent with serving the public.”
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