Late last month, the Obama/Holder Justice Department suffered
another embarrassment, and showed that its leaders probably merit
criminal prosecution, in a too-little-noticed spin-off from the
infamous New Black Panther Party case. As I have written
repeatedly, the politicized leadership of the Holderites is
thoroughly corrupt, and a menace to the very cause of justice.
The embarrassment came in the final court action of a
long-running suit brought by the indefatigable Judicial Watch. The watchdog
group had pressed requests based on the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) to force the Department of Justice (DoJ) to divulge more
information about its seemingly inexplicable, and certainly
unexplained, decision to drop voter-intimidation cases against the
Panthers for their actions outside of
a Philadelphia polling
place in 2008. As it has done in numerous other instances, the
Obama administration stonewalled, claimed spurious “privileges”
against disclosure, and prevaricated wildly through its
embarrassingly unprofessional press office and via sworn testimony
by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez. Yet Judicial Watch
prevailed in part, even against a none-too-friendly judge, thus
forcing the release of some of the withheld records.
The latest ruling from federal district judge Reggie Walton
involved Judicial Watch’s request for the government to pay its
attorneys’ fees as a result of Judicial Watch’s partial win. The
judge agreed that the government ought to be liable for at least
some of those fees. In doing so, he wrote the following passages,
which would be deeply embarrassing for any administration with the
grace to feel embarrassment, especially if an establishment media
weren’t pathetically in the pocket of said administration:
The documents reveal that political appointees within DOJ were
conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther
Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims
in that case, which would appear to contradict Assistant
Attorney General Perez’s testimony that political leadership
was not involved in that decision. Surely the public has
an interest in documents that cast doubt on the accuracy of
government officials’ representations regarding the possible
politicization of agency decisionmaking.
And:
The Court therefore concludes that the DOJ has failed to show
that its withholding of some documents from Judicial Watch
prior to the filing of this lawsuit was legally correct or
had a reasonable basis in law.
This is about as gentle a way as possible to say that Perez
probably perjured himself — a point some of us have been making
for years now as in the Washington Times
editorial noting this:
On May 14, Mr.
Perez swore under oath before the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights that there was no “political
leadership involved in the decision not to pursue this particular
case any further than it was” and that it was only “a case of
career people disagreeing with career people.”…. [Yet] By our
count, Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam
Hirsch, not only a political appointee but previously a top,
cutthroat election attorney for the national Democratic Party, sent
or received 58 e-mails about the case. The “description of withheld
information” provided by the Justice
Department indicates that Mr.
Hirsch weighed in on the decision to drop the cases.
At least a dozen of Mr.
Hirsch’s e-mails went back and forth up the chain of command to
Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, not down to people
that the department now calls “career employees” (who themselves at
the time were filling political positions). The list also shows
that Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden was involved by
contributing “current thoughts” on the matter. The office of
Attorney General Holder was
kept in the loop as well. These are all political
appointees.
This is all of utmost importance, if only because it serves as a
microcosm of how the Holder DoJ operates in general — not as a
neutral law-enforcement outfit, but as a highly politicized,
bullying group pushing an agenda both leftist and racially weighted
in favor of groups thought to be politically in hock to Obama.
Remember that it was the window opened by the Panther case that
shone light on Perez’s policies, as announced by deputy Julie
Fernandes, of refusing to enforce civil rights laws against black
perpetrators and of refusing to enforce federal law requiring that
voting rolls be cleaned up. This revelation should have served as
ample warning of the sorts of shenanigans being conducted now, in
which the administration is suing multiple states to block voter-ID
laws favored by more than 60 percent of the public and actually
suing states like Florida to block it from scrubbing the names of
non-citizens from its voter lists.
These aren’t legitimate legal disputes; these are raw attempts
to steal the election if it is close enough to be stolen.
This is the same Justice Department which, directly or through
other administrative agencies it represents, has been shown
repeatedly to be in flagrant violation of propriety. Let us count
some of the ways.
First, the Fast and Furious
fiasco. Second, the continuing Obama
effort to harm military voters, just as
DoJ also did in 2010.
Third, the obnoxious effort to force the trial of terrorist
detainees to be held in New York City. Fourth, the
unanimous Supreme Court
decision absolutely smacking down the Obama administration in
the key religious-liberty case known as Hosanna-Tabor
v. E.E.O.C.
Fifth, the administration’s
citation for civil contempt of court for its imposition of a
drilling moratorium after the BP oil spill disaster. Sixth, the
Holderites’ continued moves, vigorously opposed even by Mayor
Bloomberg and even in part by the Village Voice, to
institute racial hiring quotas for the heroic Fire Department of
New York —
even for Fire Academy applicants who missed 70 percent of
the simple questions on the entrance exam. Seventh, the
DoJ Inspector General’s just-released report
finding improper hiring practices in another DoJ division. Eighth,
the senior non-political DoJ official’s harsh
override of the Obamites’ findings against Bush administration
lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee.
Other examples are numerous, but that’s enough for now. The
reality remains that Barack Obama and his racialist,
race-baiting attorney general Eric Holder, he who sees “a
common cause that bonds the black U.S. attorney with the black
criminal or the black doctor with the black homeless person,” are
steadily trying to turn the Justice Department into a corrupt law
unto itself. In effect, Holder’s team is brandishing the billy club
of federal power, threatening to wield it for nefarious ends. It is
a thoroughly hateful enterprise, without any “reasonable basis in
law.”
