DNC Chair Candidate Tom Perez Had His Own Clinton-Style Email Scandal at Dept. of Justice

Tom Perez, the just-announced candidate for the Chairman of the Democrat National Committee, apparently had a Hillary Clinton-style email problem of his own when he was with Obama’s Department of Justice, before the President named him as the Secretary of Labor in 2013, according to a series of reports.

Secretary of Labor Perez, 55, announced his bid for Chair of the DNC this week amid the flameout of the candidacy of Keith Ellison, the Muslim congressman from Minnesota.

But with renewed focus on Perez and his career comes a reminder that, just like Hilary Clinton, Perez repeatedly broke America’s security laws and the Federal Records Act by using a private email address to hide his activities from public scrutiny.

In 2013, when Perez was angling behind the scenes to replace Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General, the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees, along with the minority staff on the Senate Judiciary Committee, launched an investigation into Perez’s activities and found that he did a lot of business at DOJ using a private email address. The investigation determined that Perez “likely violated both the spirit and letter of the Federal Records Act” by using his private email to hide what he was doing from federal officials, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Acting more like Clinton with every step during the investigation, Perez refused to obey a subpoena and supply his emails to the committee. He even refused when Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) demanded that Perez turn over his emails, the Washington Examiner reported in May of 2013.

Republicans also point out that Tom Perez is a liberal extremist. Everything he’s done — from his work at DOJ to his leadership of the Labor Department — has come replete with an extreme left-wing agenda.

Upon his announcement that he was throwing his hat in the ring for DNC chair, the Republican National Committee slammed Perez as a “radical on immigration … and race related issue,” The Hill reported this week.

Indeed, Perez has left a long list of far left actions in his wake. At the Department of Justice, he made a name for himself by using an obscure Supreme Court ruling as a weapon to charge banks with racism and using the threat of action by the Department of Justice to wring hefty settlements from them. As Labor Secretary he was a big proponent of amnesty for all illegals in the country and was a driving force behind Obama’s overtime rule — which liberals were ecstatic about but which was eventually blocked by a federal judge.

With this liberal track record, the RNC noted, “Left-wing radical Perez would put the DNC even further out of touch with average Americans.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.