Free Republic

President Obama nominated Justice Department official Thomas Perez for Labor secretary Monday -- but the candidate could be haunted by a newly released report that found he gave incomplete testimony on the controversial decision to drop charges against members of the New Black Panther Party. Perez, an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, would replace Hilda Solis at Labor if confirmed. Obama, touting Perez' personal story as the son of immigrants who became the first lawyer in his family, urged the Senate to act quickly on the nomination. *snip* Separately, the wide-ranging IG report...

President Obama nominated Justice Department official Thomas Perez for Labor secretary Monday -- but the candidate could be haunted by a newly released report that found he gave incomplete testimony on the controversial decision to drop charges against members of the New Black Panther Party. Perez, an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department´s Civil Rights Division, would replace Hilda Solis at Labor if confirmed. Obama, touting Perez´ personal story as the son of immigrants who became the first lawyer in his family, urged the Senate to act quickly on the nomination.

In a little noted decision on July 23, a federal district court judge concluded that internal DOJ documents about the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case “contradict Assistant Attorney General [Thomas] Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in” the decision to dismiss the case. In other words, the sworn testimony of Perez, the Obama political appointee who heads the Civil Rights Division, before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was apparently false. The decision in Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Justice by Judge Reggie Walton was in a case filed by Judicial Watch after the Civil...