we are very honored today that tom perez has come from washington, dc, to give welcoming remarks here at this summit. tom perez is the assistant attorney general of the civil rights division in washington, dc, he was nominated for that position by president obama and sworn in in october of 2009 and we are all the lucky -- we are all very lucky that that happened in october of 2009. tom has spent his entire career in public service and on protecting the civil rights of our most vulnerable people. tom actually joined the civil rights division as a young lawyer and while he was there he prosecuted some of the most significant cases in the country. lawyers in the civil rights division get fanned out to places in the country to handle cases in mississippi and alabama and california and all over and tom was one of those people. he was sent to texas to handle a very significant hate crime case when he was a young lawyer that involved a gang of white supremacists that went on a killing spree and ended up shooting 3 people and killing one when he was a young lawyer working in the civil rights division. he later served as a top deputy for attorney gener

>> reporter: there is a brand-new joint congressional rao report that is accusing assistant general tom perezo minnesota on february 12th of last year to make a secret deal with st. paul's mayor that is described dozens of times in the report as quid proceed could he. the department of justice would stay out of a whistle-blower lawsuit filed against the city of st. paul if the city would withdraw an appeal that was part of a supreme court case that perez thought threatened civil rights. he was in minnesota on february 12th last year. six days later the doj says they will not intervene in the whistle-blower case. one day after that the city of st. paul dropped their supreme court appeal. this report says, quote the agreement struck between assistant attorney perez and the mayor at that closed door meeting resulted not only in the withdrawal of the appeal but also the fatal weakening of a whistle-blower lawsuit potentially worth $200 million to the federal treasury. but a former department of justice official says that republicans trying to connect these dots are off base. >> the term quid pro