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WASHINGTONIAN 43 BY BENJAMIN WOFFORD PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEXEY SWALL THE MUNICIPAL OFFICIAL VERSUS THE PRESIDENT Two years ago, Karl Racine, the DC government’s top lawyer, was the little-known head of an obscure and relatively new office. Today he’s battling Facebook and suing Donald Trump—a case many serious lawyers think could fundamentally PHOTO CREDIT PHOTO CREDIT CREDIT PHOTO PHOTO damage this presidency. Who is this guy? And is his 42 WASHINGTONIAN ★ APRIL 2019 crusade actually good for the city that employs him? For many, it would be cosmic justice to see Trump taken down a peg by America’s only immigrant attorney general. counsel’s Russia probe looms like a thundering war- ship, Racine’s lawsuit may be the silent iceberg that delivers a fateful rupture to the Trump presidency. Amid all this, Racine has worked up a flurry of other high-profile causes, too. In December, he became the first prosecutor in the country to sue Facebook over the tech behemoth’s handling of private data. And within the past year, his office has led a nationwide coalition challenging the administration’s immigra- tion policies—including the denial of asylum seekers and the legality of sanctuary cities. In one ongoing case, Racine—an immigrant who came to America in 1965—has sued ICE himself. In less than five years, Racine has transformed a demure agency that defended the city from nuisance suits into one of the most prolific attorney-general offices in the country. “DC has always had a problem of not being treated with the same kind of seriousness nationally that it deserves,” says James Forman Jr., Talk to people in and Racine went viral after a professor at Yale Law School who teaches criminal around Racine’s office the President name- law. “Racine, I think, is changing that. He’s taken and you get the sense checked him at a March what’s a new office, in essence, and become a player there’s an endgame meeting of AGs. “I on the national stage.” to his high-profile feel like I know you,” lawsuits: statehood Trump said. “I feel like For a city that voted overwhelmingly against the for DC. I know you as well, Mr. President and must endure living in his shadow, it President,” Racine would be the sweetest kind of cosmic justice to see quipped. him taken down a notch by Karl Racine—America’s only immigrant attorney general, at that. Yet whatever the outcome, these cases have already helped Racine assemble an argument for a larger cause. Several DC politicians and outside lawyers say One pale evening in January, Karl Racine was ad- Then, abruptly, Racine let rip. Did anyone happen to House, at approximately the same moment his hotel the District AG’s office now rivals that of any state, and dressing a community auditorium and rapidly losing know that the AG’s office has sued or supported legal opened just down the street. Now Racine may soon that Racine has elevated the case for DC statehood, his grip on the room. Racine was roosted behind a efforts against the Trump administration, all told, 16 become known to Americans as the guy who sued under the precept of a simple theory: If you want to lectern, the 20 attendees mostly slouched in metal times? The phones plunged. “We’ve brought a case Trump, became one of the first people to thumb become a state, sue like one. Ochairs and half-zipped winter coats. Only two weeks together against Donald Trump regarding the emol- through his tax returns, and, it stands to reason, “There really are no more arguments left for why earlier, he had begun his second term as DC’s attor- uments clause.” Every face was now fixed on the six- altered the course of the 45th presidency. we shouldn’t have autonomy,” says Elizabeth Wilkins, ney general—an elected position that, five years ago, foot former point guard. “We allege that the President The emoluments suit, in which a pivotal ap- a former Supreme Court clerk who’s now senior was new on the ballot. Now he found himself mired is profiting from his office,” Racine explained, “in a peals-court ruling is expected this spring, alleges that counsel for policy in Racine’s office. “We look like a in a familiar dilemma: trying to explain exactly who manner that is completely and totally unprecedented.” Trump’s DC hotel and other holdings violate the Con- grownup now.” the hell he was. The move has become something of a favorite stitution’s little-known—and previously untested— Twenty minutes into his remarks, Racine was still parlor trick. “You saw that?” Racine asks me later. anti-corruption provision. “It’s historic,” says Brian WHEN DONALD TRUMP, A YEAR INTO HIS PRESIDENCY, parsing the complex jurisdictions of his office: The “Everybody’s like, What?!” Frosh, the attorney general of Maryland and Racine’s smeared refugees fleeing “shithole countries”—“Why AG is the District’s chief legal officer but also shares It also captures his grander ambitions in minia- co-counsel in the suit. “Nobody’s ever sued anyone, do we need more Haitians?” he reportedly asked a criminal caseload with the US Attorney’s Office— ture. Not very long ago, Racine was a public official let alone the President, over the emoluments clause.” aides—Racine took special offense. part lawyer for the mayor, part public prosecutor. with little name recognition managing a black sheep The case is notable not merely for its legal novelty, Racine was born in Haiti in 1962, shortly before The gazes of the attendees fell to their smartphones. of an office. Then Donald Trump won the White IMAGES MARTIN/AP JACQUELYN BY PHOTOGRAPH though. Several scholars believe that, while the special his parents fled the country’s blood-soaked Duvalier 44 WASHINGTONIAN ★ APRIL 2019 APRIL 2019 ★ WASHINGTONIAN 45 “I didn’t speak English. I remember feeling like I was literally placed on another planet.” regime. His father, the mayor of a small town, was in obvious danger—months earlier, a cousin had been rounded up and shot to death. His mother, a linguist, came to study at Howard and Georgetown. Racine and his elder sister were left behind, reuniting with their parents in America three years later. His moth- er, Racine says, “was not going to raise her kids in a country where we would have to choose either to remain silent or put our lives at risk.” He pauses, then smiles: “That’s ‘chain migration,’ as Trump would say.” Racine recounts the family history one afternoon in his Judiciary Square office, the clock tower of the Trump hotel visible from his corner-suite windows. As a child, he spent weekends with his mother and sister in Georgetown University’s library, whispering in Haitian Creole or French, while his father worked in retail, starting as a security guard at Sears. The family lived in Chevy Chase DC. “I knew I was an immigrant,” Racine says. “I didn’t speak English. I remember going to school and feeling like I was Racine (far right in literally placed on another planet.” Racine was both pictures) became At 56, Racine is the severe kind of good-looking: born in Haiti; a US citizen in 1992, his parents His impeccably kept, white-fringed hair encases two taking his oath at the DC emigrated so raptor eyes that turn up cheerfully at the corners. He courthouse at the start his mother of his law career. has the linguistic tendencies of an appellate lawyer; could study at in casual company, he drops words like “wherein” Georgetown. and “monies.” But silence is his most pronounced The family had mannerism—the stealthy bearing of a litigator lying against Princeton after being fouled by Craig Rob- glamorous DC public defender’s office, where he to investigate companies like Johnson & Johnson a bicultural in wait just to tell you, when you’re all finished, how inson, brother of future First Lady Michelle Obama. developed a reputation for representing juveniles. for allegedly misleading District consumers. The life, speaking you forgot to consider Rule 11. With his permanently (This is one episode Racine holds forth on in gar- He worked in the Office of White House Counsel office’s public-advocacy division, among other French and Creole at home in smiling eyes, the effect can be unsettling, like a Bond rulous detail: “Coach Weinhauer is like, ‘Get in the in the ’90s, representing President Clinton during things, pursues cases of economic justice, such as Northwest DC. villain delighted to realize you’re seated directly over game!’ Oh, shit . .” he says. “I was f---ing exhausted.”) the Lewinsky era. In 2006, he was named managing wage theft—only one of a handful of AG offices in the a trap door. He never, ever interrupts. Politics yielded little interest—until law school at partner of Venable, the first black person in the country to do so. By the time he became a citizen in 1992, his the University of Virginia, where he took immigration country to helm a law firm of that size. Meanwhile, on the criminal side, Racine quiet- parents had instilled what his sister, Mika, calls a law. On the weekends, he began driving into the coun- Back then, DC had not yet elected an attorney ly established the District as a leader in criminal- bicultural and global perspective: There were the tryside to work at a pro bono legal clinic for migrant general. Instead, the District employed what it called justice reform. The AG is responsible for prosecut- years of Sunday gatherings that the Racines hosted farmworkers.