A Department of Justice staffer claims she was abruptly fired after it emerged that her husband was the brains behind a controversial anti-ICE app that warns users when the feds are closing in.
Carolyn Feinstein, who worked as a DOJ forensic accountant in Austin, Texas, alleges she was terminated last Friday as “retribution” over her spouse’s radical alert system, which she has minority shares in.
“This was retribution. I was fired because of the actions, or activism, of my husband,” Feinstein told the Daily Beast on Monday.
Feinstein’s tech husband, Joshua Aaron, recently sparked outrage after it emerged he’d created the ICEBlock app, which alerts users if Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been spotted within a five-mile radius of them.
President Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and ICE Acting Director Tom Lyon quickly called on the DOJ to investigate after Feinstein’s hubby went on CNN last month to advertise the app — sparking immediate backlash.
Feinstein claims she informed the DOJ of her ties to the app creator after he allegedly started receiving death threats.
“Since we live in the same house, I thought it was pertinent to contact my employer, the DOJ, to notify them of death threats that were coming in and just in case I needed to be out of the office, so they would be prepared,” she said.
A week later, Feinstein said the Office of the US Trustee started asking questions about the app.
Feinstein admitted she has minority shares in All U Chart, Inc., which hold the IP address for the app.
She insisted, though, that it was only in case her husband were to become “incapacitated” so she could then shut it down.
A DOJ spokesperson said it had be probing Feinstein’s connection to the app for “several weeks” after it emerged she had interests in the company.
“ICEBlock is an app that illegal aliens use to evade capture while endangering the lives of ICE officers,” the spokesperson said, adding that the department “will not tolerate threats against law enforcement or law enforcement officers.”
Feinstein, for her part, insisted that her role at the DOJ was “unbiased.”
“It is insulting to me because I dedicated myself and my career to serving the people of the United States, and now the DOJ is claiming I was attempting to harm some of them. And that’s not true,” she said.
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