Those of you who have been following the New Black Panther Party scandal will be very interested in a new article published in The Washington Post last week. It includes some explosive new accusations of racism against the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) as documented in a draft report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, as a result of a year-long investigation into the DOJ’s decision to drop the Black Panther voter intimidation case.
Of course, much of this report necessarily relates to the specific voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers, who brandished weapons and threatened voters at a polling station during the 2008 elections.
According to Post excerpts, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report reflects a deep and rancorous divide within the DOJ over whether that case should have been prosecuted. Here are a few excerpts from the article, which I suggest you read in full:
•Interviews and government documents reviewed by The Washington Post show that the [Black Panther] case tapped into deep divisions within the Justice Department that persist today over whether the agency should focus on protecting historically oppressed minorities or enforce laws without regard to race.
•After the Obama administration took over, high-level political appointees relayed their thoughts on the case in a stream of internal e-mails in the days leading to the dismissal….That decision to pull back the lawsuit caused conflicts so heated that trial team members at times threw memos in anger or cursed at supervisors.
•In recent months, [Justice Department attorney J. Christian] Adams and a Justice Department colleague have said the [Black Panther] case was dismissed because the department is reluctant to pursue cases against minorities accused of violating the voting rights of whites. Three other Justice Department lawyers, in recent interviews, gave the same description of the department’s culture, which department officials strongly deny.
These revelations are certainly consistent with testimony by another DOJ attorney, Christopher Coates, who testified recently before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that there exists at the DOJ “…a deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of whites who have been discriminated against.”
But according to the Post article, these divisions existed long before the Black Panther scandal.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights also contemplated another voter rights case that yielded shocking evidence of reverse discrimination at the DOJ. That case involved Ike Brown, “an African American political boss in rural Mississippi, [who] was accused by the Justice Department in 2005 of discriminating against the county’s white minority.” (This was the first time in U.S. history that the 1965 Voting Rights Act was used to prosecute discrimination against whites.) According to The Washington Post:
Three Justice Department lawyers, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from their supervisors, described the same tensions, among career lawyers as well as political appointees. Employees who worked on the Brown case were harassed by colleagues, they said, and some department lawyers anonymously went on legal blogs “absolutely tearing apart anybody who was involved in that case,” said one lawyer.
“There are career people who feel strongly that it is not the voting section’s job to protect white voters,” the lawyer said. “The environment is that you better toe the line of traditional civil rights ideas or you better keep quiet about it, because you will not advance, you will not receive awards and you will be ostracized.”
Just stop and consider the language used here: DOJ officials who did not “toe the line of traditional civil rights” “feared retaliation.” They were “harassed” and “ostracized” by DOJ colleagues who were “tearing apart” anyone who thought Brown ought to be held accountable.
Does anyone else find this outrageous? Evidence shows that DOJ officials used harassment and intimidation to stop colleagues from prosecuting the Black Panthers, who used similar tactics to terrorize voters. True, there is no evidence that DOJ officials brandished weapons to drive home their point, but the intent was certainly to bully those with whom they disagreed into submission.
Perhaps we should not be so surprised. That is the Chicago Way.
The Post also referenced the documents we uncovered proving that top political appointees at the DOJ were indeed involved in the decision to drop the lawsuit, which directly contradicts sworn testimony by one Obama DOJ official who testified that no political appointees were involved in this decision:
Justice Department records turned over in a lawsuit to the conservative group Judicial Watch show a flurry of e-mails between the Civil Rights Division and the office of Associate Attorney General Thomas Perelli, a political appointee who supervises the division.
“Where are we on the Black Panther case?” read the subject line of a Perelli e-mail to his deputy the day before the case was dropped. Perelli, the department’s No. 3 official, wrote that he was enclosing the “current thoughts” of the deputy attorney general’s office, the No. 2 official.
Perelli’s staff brought the matter to Holder’s attention before the department dropped the charges, other documents show…
What is most disturbing about these revelations is that it appears the problems inside the DOJ are systemic and pervasive. This is not a case of an isolated DOJ attorney going rogue. Here we have a cadre of leftist officials inside the DOJ who are actively undermining the rule of law by harassing and intimidating their colleagues – all because of race.
When a major liberal newspaper reveals race-based decision making on civil rights enforcement at the DOJ, one would think there be a massive reaction in Washington. Instead, we hear nary a peep from Establishment politicians of either Party and unforgivable silence from the liberal Big Media.
But I’m concerned that revelations that enforcement of laws against voter fraud is race-based and political at the Obama DOJ will encourage lawlessness on Election Day. Sure enough, the Black Panther group is set to “watch” polls in Houston on Election Day. And Tea Party and other conservatives concerned about voter fraud are being accused by leftists of trying to intimidate voters.
Can anyone expect this DOJ to fairly sort this out and enforce the laws impartially?
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