Posted on 07/04/2010 11:52:45 AM PDT by jazusamo
For more than a year, Attorney General Eric Holder has failed to adequately explain why his Justice Department dropped a slam-dunk voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.
His department's answers to inquiries have been incomplete and unsatisfactory. Career attorneys involved in the case have not been available for questioning, even when subpoenaed.
Now, one lawyer is speaking up - and making damning allegations against the Justice Department.
J. Christian Adams, who was a Justice Department voting-rights lawyer until he resigned last month, is scheduled to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on Tuesday. At issue are the events of Election Day 2008 in Philadelphia.
Here's how a Justice Department complaint filed in January 2009 described those events:
Samir Shabazz, head of the Philadelphia chapter of the New Black Panther Party, and party member Jerry Jackson were "deployed" in front of a Fairmount Avenue polling place in "military style uniforms."
Shabazz brandished a nightstick. He "pointed the weapon at individuals, menacingly tapped it [in] his other hand, or menacingly tapped it elsewhere." Both Shabazz and Jackson leveled "racial threats and racial insults at both black and white individuals," and they "made menacing and intimidating gestures, statements, and movements directed at individuals who were present to aid voters."
The two men, the party, and its national chairman were named in the complaint. Since none responded, the case was all but won.
However, in May 2009, the Justice Department dropped claims against all but Shabazz, who was merely ordered not to take a weapon to a Philadelphia polling place through 2012.
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R., Va.), a Philly native, has repeatedly called for an explanation. The Civil Rights Commission has held hearings on the case. In May, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez told the commission that the case had been re-reviewed, and the evidence deemed insufficient to proceed.
"That claim is false," Adams, the former Justice lawyer, wrote in the Washington Times last month. "If the actions in Philadelphia do not constitute voter intimidation, it is hard to imagine what would, short of an actual outbreak of violence at the polls."
Adams wrote that the dismissal of the case "was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law." As for the re-review, "the lawyers who ordered the dismissal ... did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation."
What's "most disturbing," Adams wrote, is "the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases.
"Some of my coworkers," Adams continued, "argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. ... Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the [Justice Department's] Voting Section."
In a follow-up article for the website Pajamas Media on Monday, Adams cited other cases, in Texas and Connecticut, showing the department's "hostility toward race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws."
The Justice Department fired back last week, saying in a statement that " ... it is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda."
I understand that some view the Panther incident as an unimportant blip on a historic election day. I get not wanting to make too much of an insignificant gang of thugs. But the message the Justice Department sends about hate groups and equal enforcement is important.
One of the department's own, Christopher Coates, said in January, "America is increasingly a multiracial, multiethnic, and multicultural society. For such a diverse group of people to be able to live and function together in a democratic society, there have to be certain common standards that we are bound by and that protect us all. ... For the Department of Justice to enforce the Voting Rights Act only to protect members of certain minority groups breaches the fundamental guarantee of equal protection. ..."
The remarks of Coates, a former ACLU lawyer, were reported by National Review Online when he stepped down as Voting Section chief. In his piece Monday, Adams suggests that Coates, who also worked on the Panther case, was transferred because of his "race-neutral enforcement" of the law.
Coates is still with the department, so he won't be with Adams at the witness table Tuesday. But the attorney general should be.
Target rich environment!
Well a man, come on
Six o’clock news
Says somebody been shot
Somebody’s been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole their car
Somebody got away
Somebody didn’t get too far, yeah
They didn’t get too far
Grandpappy told my pappy
Back in my day, son
A man had to answer
For the wicked thing he done
Take all the rope in Texas
Find a tall oak tree
Round up all of them bad boys
And hang ‘em high in the street
For all the people to see
And justice is the one thing
You should always find
You gotta saddle up your boys
You gotta draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles
We’ll sing a victory tune
And we’ll all meet back
At the local saloon
We’ll raises up our glasses
Against evil forces
Singing, “Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!”
We got too many gangsters
Doing dirty deeds
Too much corruption
And crime in the streets
It’s time the long arm of the law
Put a few more in the ground
Send them all to their Maker
And he’ll set them on down
You can bet, He’ll set ‘em down
Cause justice is the one thing
You should always find
You gotta saddle up your boys
You gotta draw a hard line
When the gunsmoke settles
We’ll sing a victory tune
And we’ll all meet back
At the local saloon
And we’ll raise up our glasses
Against evil forces
Singing, “Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!”
Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses!
What angers me even more is that it seems to me that the New Black Panther Party knew the end result ( from justice ) going in and weren't just hoping that it would conclude the way it has so far.
Yep, they’re quite a bunch of racists.
Christopher Adams now has a website and he’s got a couple of videos posted right near the top that are real eye openers on the NBPP.
http://www.electionlawcenter.com/
I believe you’re absolutely right about them knowing the outcome before they didn’t show in court, it’s a real pi$$-me-offer.
Not that they won’t try it, but these guys would be fools to try this nonsense again.
If you see anything like this, you will have to guage your own physical courage at that moment. If you decide to, call the police and tell these terrorists that you have done so. Expect an immediate violent response, have your own ready and I mean the instant they step toward you. Remember, they have probably beat people without reprisal before and will not care about doing it to you.
They will not care about witnesses, they don’t fear the police and they think you are weak, hence the reason they did the voter intimidation.
Again, be prepared to move the instant you confront them, they certainly will.
I my opinion O’Reilly, Holder and Obama are all POS. O’Reilly has one on for Obama.
Nay, these guys, the new black panther party, were just trial balloons to test the system.
Get ready for the SEIU thugs who will appear in mass on election day to intimidate voters
How about that? Under Obama we get a DOJ that doesn’t care about the”J”.
Justice for all? Naaa, justice only for some.
Impeach them all! ASAP!
You may have opened a can of worms. I would bet almost anything there is a connection!
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