Tom Malinowski

Malinowski was born in Słupsk, Poland, and lived in Brwinów until leaving the country at the age of six with his mother, Joanna, who married journalist and political operative Blair Clark. He grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and graduated in 1983 from Princeton High School, where he wrote for the school newspaper The Tower and interned in Senator Bill Bradley's office. In 1987, Malinowski received a bachelor of arts in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he won a Harry S. Truman Scholarship in 1985. In 1991, he received a master of philosophy from St. Antony's College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Early career

Malinowski worked as a special assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1988. He worked for the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Austria, and in 1993 as a research assistant for the Ford Foundation. From 1994 to 1998, Malinowski was a speechwriter for U.S. Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright as well as a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State. From 1998 to 2001, he served as senior director on the National Security Council at the White House.

Human Rights Watch

From 2001 to 2013, Malinowski was the Washington director for Human Rights Watch (HRW). In that position, he advocated for the end of torture techniques and black sites the U.S. government used during the war on terror. He campaigned for democratic reforms in Myanmar and financial sanctions on its leadership. Malinowski argued for the recognition of women's rights as a precondition to any peace talks with the Taliban. He also pushed for a no-fly zone in Syria during the ongoing civil war.

Assistant Secretary of State

Some saw Malinowski as a likely nominee for Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, but his previous registration as a lobbyist at HRW necessitated a waiver from the president. On July 8, 2013, during Obama's second term, Malinowski was nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. He testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 24, 2013, and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 2, 2014. According to columnist Jennifer Rubin, leaders from both parties praised Malinowski in 2014 for his defense of human rights and his work toward ending torture.

In 2016, Malinowski said the State Department planned to release a list of North Korean human rights abusers. He backed the United Nations' efforts to investigate possible war crimes committed during the Sri Lankan Civil War. He assisted with sanctioning Russian officials under the Magnitsky Act for human rights abuses.

In July 2014, Bahrain's government expelled Malinowski after he met with members of a Bahraini opposition group during a scheduled visit. Bahrain's foreign ministry asserted that his meeting was an improper intervention in the country's affairs but said the incident would not affect Bahrain–U.S. relations. The U.S. State Department released a statement of concern about the actions while Secretary of State John Kerry called Bahrain's actions unacceptable and contrary to diplomatic protocol. Malinowski returned to Bahrain in December 2014 with the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs.

After his tenure at the State Department, Malinowski joined fellow former Obama officials to lobby Congress to prevent the Trump administration from lifting the sanctions on Russia after it annexed Crimea. He criticized Donald Trump for having an "obscene fondness" for the world's tyrants and instituting a "complete departure from decades of American tradition".

In September 2017, Malinowski moved to Rocky Hill, New Jersey, close to where he grew up. In 2020, he moved to the Ringoes section of East Amwell Township, New Jersey.

Malinowski's stepfather Blair Clark was a journalist, a broadcast executive, and a political operator. Clark's sister was Anne Martindell, a member of the New Jersey State Senate and a United States ambassador to New Zealand.

Malinowski has faced charges related to driving on a suspended license.

Malinowski was previously married to a Burmese refugee whom he met studying at Oxford. The couple has one daughter, Emily. In 2022 he married Henrietta Levin.

Controversy

In April 2021, the Associated Press reported that Malinowski had traded approximately $1 million of stock in medical and tech companies involved in the COVID-19 pandemic response. Malinowski failed to disclose the trades within the period of time required by federal law; he said the failure to disclose the trades was an error. Two complaints against him were filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics, which announced in October 2021 that it found "substantial reason to believe" that Malinowski had violated federal laws designed to defend against conflicts of interest. The office formally referred the investigation to the House Committee on Ethics, which continued its own investigation. The House Ethics Committee's investigation into Malinowski's stock trading proceeded, and ended in August 2022, after the death of Jackie Walorski, ranking Republican on the House Ethics Committee. Walorski could not be replaced on the Ethics Committee before the November 2022 election, which Malinowski lost, ending the investigation.