WASHINGTON (JTA) — The City of Baltimore cut ties with a lawyer after an advocacy group exposed his ties to neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial groups.
The office of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake terminated its contract with Glen Keith Allen, effective immediately, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported Thursday afternoon.
The SPLC posted on its website documents showing Allen paid dues to the neo-Nazi National Alliance. He also paid a $25 fee to attend a 2007 conference of Holocaust deniers.
According to the SPLC, Allen also told Iran’s Press TV in 2012 that he believed that Israel’s Mossad spy agency was responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Allen was representing the city in a lawsuit filed by an African-American man who served 19 years on a wrongful murder conviction. Baltimore recently was the subject of a scathing U.S. Justice Department report describing police abuses against the city’s minorities.
The mayor’s office said in a statement that Allen, a veteran of DLA Piper, a major law firm, was “fully vetted at the time of his hire,” adding that the “law department does not as a general practice question its hired or contract attorneys about their political views.”
Allen declined to comment to the Baltimore Sun.
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