J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department official who served during both the Bush and Obama administrations said that “the law was a suggestion” under Attorney General Eric Holder and “there is a culture of lawlessness in the Justice Department” on Saturday’s “Huckabee” on the Fox News Channel.
“During the Bush years, when we enforced civil rights laws, we looked at the law, that was the starting point…under the Obama administration, after the inauguration, the law became a suggestion. It was sort of a ‘eh, this law says this, but we’re really after this’…this is an administration that selectively enforces the law, doesn’t apply the law properly, and uses the law as a political weapon” he stated. And “there is a culture of lawlessness in this Justice Department. Right now, there are people, who, according to the Inspector General, committed perjury, still working in the voting section. There are employees who stole laptops, used government credit cards to visit their mistress in Miami, who got a buyout at the Justice Department. There is a culture of lawlessness and tolerance for wrongdoing.”
He added that Holder’s unpopularity was due to his policies and not his race, “there is a reason why Eric Holder is the least popular member of the administration…and it has absolutely nothing to do with race. It has to do with his policies, if anything has to do with race, he’s pushing the race in the face of Americans. he’s calling them racial cowards,” and accused Holder of using race “to deflect criticism, but also to energize the political base.”
Fox News Political Analyst Juan Williams disagreed with this claim, responding “I think that what you have is a situation in this country where race is a major issue. Certainly a political issue, and we know that the Republican Party has become overwhelmingly white in this period, and that there is an effort, I think, on the part of the Democrats to capture and hold that minority base, so race is definitely an issue, and I think all of us at this table know it. But, I must tell you, that when Holder comes in and deals with the New Black Panther Party and some guy standing at the door, and says ‘these are two guys and we’re only going to go so far,’ what was the response from the Republican Party? It was to say ‘you’re playing racial politics, Eric Holder, because if those were two white guys doing it, all hell would have broken loose.’”
Williams also argued that Adams’ criticism was “highly political,” and that, in his admittedly political opinion “Eric Holder under Barack Obama actually improved the quality of the Justice Department,” citing controversies at the DOJ during the Bush administration and Holder’s efforts to protect voting rights so that “you don’t have a politicization. [In] which Republicans say ‘these young people, these old people, these minorities, they tend to vote Democratic, and so we’re going to try to put in place laws that would disenfranchise them.’” He also said that Adams’ criticisms were unfairly smearing the FBI along with Attorney General Holder.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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