Even after an above-the-fold, front-page story in the
Washington Post, the establishment media seems determined
to sit back and wait rather than do any “enterprise reporting” on
the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case and, more
importantly, on the much bigger and broader policy and ethics
questions swirling around it. This is a serious dereliction of
journalistic responsibility. For those reporters who actually want
to do their jobs, and for all of you readers who rightly continue
to insist that this is an important topic, herewith is a guided
tour to the Panther scandal and its broader implications.
The uncontroverted story on Election Day,
2008
Panthers Minister King Samir
Shabazz and Jerry Jackson, in black paramilitary garb, stood
outside the polling place in close formation, Shabazz brandishing a
night-stick, while they used racial epithets and threatening
language and gestures. Witnesses reported seeing at least several
voters take stock of the situation and turn around and leave
without voting. Former Kennedy family civil rights lawyer Bartle
Bull, who was on the scene, said it was the worst example of voter
intimidation he had ever seen. Not one person, in any forum, has
ever contested these basic facts. Ever.
The charges
A team of
Department of Justice (DoJ) career attorneys led by former ACLU
attorney and multiple award-winning lawyer Christopher Coates
brought civil rights charges against both Panthers on the scene,
plus against national Panther leader Malik Zulu Shabazz and the
national party as a whole, based on statements made by Shabazz and
other Panther leaders indicating that the stationing of Mr. Jackson
and the other (unrelated) Shabazz was part of a nationwide effort.
The attorney team wanted to secure a nationwide injunction against
all the defendants, prohibiting them from any similar activity in
future elections. (The Panthers also would have been subject to
repaying the DoJ for legal costs expended during the proceedings.)
The Panthers failed even to contest the charges. The judge was
ready to enter a default judgment against them, but just when the
lawyers were ready to submit the paperwork, Obama
political-appointee superiors pulled the plug. Charges were
completely dropped against Zulu Shabazz, the party, and Mr. Jackson
— the latter a registered Democratic Party poll-watcher and local
elected Democratic Party official. Samir Shabazz received an
injunction against brandishing a weapon within 100 feet of polls —
already illegal anyway — only within the city limits of
Philadelphia and only for the next four years.
The DoJ lawyers
In addition to the aforementioned Mr. Coates, the other major
career attorney who brought the case also has an excellent court
record. J. Christian Adams won commendations for protecting the
rights of black voters in South Carolina, and received promotions
under both the Bush and the Obama administrations. Yes, he has a
history as a political conservative. So what? Has anybody
challenged his lawyership or integrity? Nope. Has any of his sworn
testimony been proved false? No: It all has been backed by others
in affidavits and in other sworn testimony.
Meanwhile, in an unusual move, the Obama team asked DoJ’s
appellate division to weigh in on the case — and both appellate
lawyers, Diana K. Flynn
and Marie K. McElderry, came down on the side of pursuing all the
cases, not just the one against Samir Shabazz. Ms. Flynn, like Mr.
Coates, does not have major Republican ties: Indeed, she has been
cited in news reports as having given information damaging to Bush
political appointees accused of improperly using political
considerations in hiring decisions.
On the other hand, the two lawyers with most immediate
authority in overruling the career team both have checkered
records. Both Loretta King and Steve Rosenbaum have earned
sanctions from federal courts for
ethical violations. Mr. Rosenbaum worked on a case on behalf of
ACORN in the 1990s with Barack Obama. Ms. King is a hyper-partisan
liberal who issued one of the most absurdly tendentious voting-law
rulings imaginable,
telling a black-majority North Carolina town that it is
incapable of electing its own “candidates of choice” unless the
candidates are identified as Democrats. Both King and Rosenbaum
have occupied “career” positions at DoJ, but both were serving in
temporary “political” positions during the time the Panther case
was dropped.
Mr. Rosenbaum consulted at least 58 times by e-mail with
Sam Hirsch, a political appointee and former top lawyer for the
national Democratic Party. Also deeply involved in the decision was
political appointee Tom Perrelli, a former Harvard Law
Review managing editor under Obama who raised half a million
dollars for the Obama campaign. Mr. Perrelli visited the White
House on numerous occasions that almost always coincided with key
developments in the Panther case.
The political involvement
It is hard to stress just how important this point is, at
least for establishing the relative credibility of the major
players. Again and again (and again and again), Obama appointees
have told the media and testified under oath that the decision to
punt away these cases were made exclusively by “career” appointees
— later modified to say that the career appointees did vaguely
keep “political” higher-ups informed of their decisions. Setting
aside the technical dispute of whether King and Rosenbaum (the
supposed decision-makers) were acting in political capacities at
the time, this claim does not even come close to passing the smell
test. Mr. Hirsch’s 58 email messages, including a dozen up the line
to Mr. Perrelli (and mentions of at least some consultation as well
with the top two people then in the department, Attorney General
Eric Holder and Deputy AG David Ogden), show on their face that the
political appointees were not merely passive recipients of
information, but active participants in deciding to drop the case.
This raises issues of potential perjury by civil rights division
chief Thomas Perez — who testified otherwise to the US. Commission
on Civil Rights — and also raises the same questions that sent the
media into a tizzy when President Bush fired eight U.S. attorneys
in 2006. Namely, this: Did political appointees not just implement
policy, but actually interfere with a particular case for political
reasons? To do the latter is a way of obstructing justice, and is
highly improper.
The political question gets more serious if the White
House interfered. That’s why two
Washington Times
reports from January, detailing Mr. Perrelli’s White House
meetings, are so important. Less than two weeks ago, the non-profit
watchdog group Judicial Watch, which unearthed the existence of the
Hirsch e-mails,
filed suit to get more information about those Perrelli
meetings. One question curious reporters ought to be asking is, who
is the unnamed official who sat in on certain of those meetings?
Was it Van Jones? Was it Rahm Emanuel? Was it the president
himself?
What also is clearer than ever, after sworn testimony by
Mr. Coates, is that current and former officials with the
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund have shown unusual
interest in, and weighed in about, this case from the very start.
Again, was that outside involvement of the sort that amounts to
undue political interference with law
enforcement?
The important policy
questions
Almost from the moment the story broke about the case being
dropped, writers following the case (including, but far from
limited to, yours truly) have said this is far more than just a
case about an incident at a single polling place, but instead was
about the hugely important question of whether the Obama DoJ has
adopted a policy long favored in the bowels of the DoJ’s Civil
Rights Division. The alleged policy is to enforce civil rights laws
only to protect racial or language minorities, but not to protect
whites (and maybe Asians as well) from black perpetrators — even
in jurisdictions where whites are a small minority and black
officials hold immense power.
Nobody, absolutely nobody, will say on the record that
this would be an acceptable or lawful policy — because it is
manifestly lawless. Even Michael Yaki, the member of the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights who has played point man for the
administration’s defense, said this in open hearing on July 16: “If
someone made that statement [about choosing not to enforce the laws
equally] within the Department of Justice, that person should be
fired. That person should be tossed out on their ear in two seconds
flat.” Mr. Yaki has since
written to this publication that his comment was taken out of
context (it wasn’t), because he said it was clear that he does not
believe this sort of thing is indeed going on at DoJ. Well, since
then, Mr. Coates has provided sworn testimony to that effect, and
provided all sorts of examples of how and when those statements
were made and their attitudes implemented. Most important is that
Mr. Coates said he officially recommended more than a year ago that
DoJ take enforcement actions against eight states that were not
scrubbing their voter rolls of dead people and felons — and, as is
a matter of public record, DoJ still has not acted.
Mr. Adams, for his part, has filed notice letters to 16
states that private citizens may sue them to force what looks like
clear violations of the voter-scrubbing statute. Again, if DoJ were
doing its job, rather than following the policy to whose existence
Messrs. Coates and Adams testified, then these suits would not even
be on the radar.
The sworn testimony of both attorneys is highly credible.
Numerous other employees of DoJ were in attendance when some of
these policy statements were made. They should be asked to testify
about these issues — and no conceivable legal privilege could be
cited to block such testimony, because no “deliberative process” on
any particular case was involved.
Not only that, but the story told by Mr. Coates about
Civil Rights Division hostility to race-neutral enforcement of the
law is entirely believable on another count. The fact — not
opinion, fact — is that despite Bush administration efforts to
politicize hiring at DoJ, the career ranks of the department skew
heavily to the political left. In 2008, as of two weeks before the
last election, DoJ attorneys in the DC metro area alone had donated
more than $150,000 to the Obama campaign. The Civil Rights Division
long has been known to skew particularly heavily to the left of
left. Anybody who has spent any time with the liberal academicians
who dominate most law schools today knows, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, that the policies allegedly embraced by the Obama Justice
Department reflect views rampant in liberal legal circles. To even
claim otherwise is to tell a bald-faced lie.
The specter of perjury, and the abuse of a
whistleblower
Mr. Perez, the now-head
of the Civil Rights Division (confirmed long after the Panther case
was dropped), could be in real trouble. As Brit Hume noted in an
on-air commentary at Fox News, the question of potential perjury
should now be raised. Mr. Perez told the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, under oath, that he was unaware of any serious allegations
of such a policy of race-biased enforcement of civil rights laws,
and that he would not put up with any employee who embraced or
pursued such a policy. But now Mr. Coates and Mr. Adams have said
they specifically informed Mr. Perez of their credible allegations
to that effect before Mr. Perez’s testimony. And now there
are reports that Mr. Coates wrote a memo in April — a month before
Mr. Perez’ testimony - outlining these complaints. This issue,
combined with Mr. Perez’ highly misleading testimony to the effect
of a lack of political-appointee involvement in the
decision-making, makes Mr. Perez’ credibility almost
nil.
Now come
reports that DoJ officials tried to intimidate Mr. Coates, the
night before his testimony, to keep him from testifying.
This intimidation letter came after U.S. Rep.
Frank Wolf sent a letter to Holder warning him that Mr. Coates
had claimed whistleblower status, and that it is explicitly illegal
to try to interfere with a whistleblower’s testimony.
Perjury? Racially biased justice? Abuse of a
whistleblower? Political interference with an ongoing
law-enforcement case? These are issues and allegations that,
individually and alone, usually send the establishment media into a
tizzy. All together, they should be attracting almost-wall-to-wall
coverage on the network news.
Abuse of claims of various legal
“privileges”
Finally, the media usually goes bonkers when administrations block
the free flow of public information by making expansive claims of
executive privilege and all sorts of other, lesser claims of
“privilege” against the ordinary requirements that government be
transparent. It is now worth noting
that the Obama DoJ’s privilege claims in this instance go so far
beyond the usual bounds that jaws should be dropping, aghast at
the sight.
Conclusion
Come on, media. Do your jobs.
