Dr. Thernstrom, Are You Serious? (DOJ/Black Panther/Thernstrom fiasco)

Abigail Thernstrom, vice chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, has written what Pete Kirsanow aptly described as a "bewildering" response to my column of a week earlier. I had taken issue with Thernstrom's absurd claim that the Justice Department's dismissal of the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case is "small potatoes." I haven't gotten around to replying yet, but Pete (Thernstrom's fellow commmissioner) and former Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky (Thernstrom's friend) have both demolished Thernstrom's response.

There remain a few more things to say, but for now, I have a pressing question for Dr. Thernstrom: Are you serious?

In her NRO responsive essay, Thernstrom wrote:

I still have questions about DOJ’s conduct, and I remain interested in knowing more about why the department declined to pursue the case. I would thus join my colleagues in welcoming further testimony. I would love to hear firsthand from Christopher Coates about DOJ’s handling of this case. Similarly, I think the world deserves to know what Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes actually said about the Civil Rights Division’s enforcement priorities.

* * *

[M]y conservative colleagues on the panel have now shifted the focus of their investigation to the broader question of racial double-standards in the enforcement of voting rights — that is, whether the Obama DOJ has a policy of offering protections for black voters but not white ones. That issue greatly interests me, and I hope that the Justice Department will send additional representatives who will be willing to discuss the Commission’s old and new concerns.

Dr. Thernstrom has a funny way of showing what "greatly interests" her.

On July 16, her colleagues on the Commission gave her a chance to put her money where her mouth is. They voted to ask the Justice Department for the testimony of Christopher Coates, the guy Thernstrom told NRO readers she'd "love to hear first-hand" from. The request is set forth in a letter sent yesterday to Attorney General Holder, signed by Commission Chair Gerald Reynolds. This short letter can be read in its entirety here, and Jen Rubin has posted the relevant parts of it at Contentions. But to put the letter's requests in the words Thernstrom used, the Commission would like to ask Coates (a) "what Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes actually said about the Civil Rights Division’s enforcement priorities" (remember, that's the thing Thernstrom told NRO readers "the world deserves to know"); and (b) "whether the Obama DOJ has a policy of offering protections for black voters but not white ones."

Yet, at the July 16 hearing, Dr. Thernstrom refused to support the Commission's request for this testimony. As Pete Kirsanow wrote in his post, replying specifically to Thernstrom's claim that she would "join [her] colleagues in welcoming further testimony" from Coates and others with relevant knowledge of DOJ's civil rights enforcement policy:

This is news to the other members of the Commission. On July 16, a majority of Commissioners approved a motion to once again request that the Justice Department produce the very witnesses that Thernstrom now claims she is interested in hearing from. The motion was crafted in a manner to circumvent the Justice Department’s year-long refusal to produce such witnesses.

Thernstrom refused to support the motion. [Emphasis in original.]

I find this jaw-dropping. I do not know Dr. Thernstrom — we've been introduced once, I think — but I have always admired her work. Consequently, it pains me to note that her responsive essay, which NRO published on July 27, was obviously written several days after the July 16 Commission meeting at which she would not support the motion to ask DOJ for the pertinent testimony.

Even if Thernstrom had not written a responsive essay, there would be no good reason for the Civil Rights Commission not to ask for the testimony sought in the letter. But let's put that aside. How does Dr. Thernstrom justify telling NRO readers she is anxious to hear testimony for which she had refused to support a Commission request only days earlier?

From NRO/The Corner:

Civil Rights Commissioners Rebut Thernstrom [Peter Kirsanow]

My conservative-leaning colleagues on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and I have issued the following joint statement in response to certain assertions made by Abigail Thernstrom about the New Black Panther Party matter.

Our fellow member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom, has asserted in various media outlets that the Commission’s investigation into the Justice Department’s handling of the New Black Panther Party matter is a politically-motivated attempt to damage President Obama. Commissioner Thernstrom told Politico last week, “This doesn’t have anything to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their [conservative-leaning commissioners’] fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration.” “My fellow conservatives on the Commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the President.”

We decline to comment here on Commissioner Thernstrom’s motives for making these statements or for any other votes or positions she’s taken recently. For the record, however, not one of the undersigned Commissioners made the statements attributed to us by Commissioner Thernstrom. Nor have we harbored such sentiments.

Not only is this accusation baseless, it deflects attention from the serious allegations of wrongdoing within the Department of Justice both in connection with the New Black Panther Party case and more broadly. Predictably, her statements have been seized by some to diminish the importance and credibility of the investigation.

The Commission is charged by Congress with the responsibility for issuing at least one report each year on an issue of the federal enforcement of civil rights laws. This year our enforcement topic is the Department of Justice’s handling of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case.

The Commission’s investigation was prompted solely by what a majority of Commissioners (including, at one time, Commissioner Thernstrom) perceived as the unusual circumstances surrounding the New Black Panther Party case. We were and continue to be concerned about the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss charges as to three of the four defendants after there had already been an entry of default against all of them as well as the decision to pursue an extremely narrow remedy against the remaining defendant. The Justice Department’s initial response to members of Congress and the Commission — that the facts and circumstances of the case did not constitute voter intimidation — made the dismissal more significant because that seemed to signal an erroneous and potentially problematic change in voter intimidation enforcement policy. In inquiring into the motivations behind and the future implications of those decisions, we are doing our job.

Indeed, the evidence adduced so far suggests that our disquiet over that case may have been justified. At this point, former Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams has testified under oath to a culture of hostility to the race-neutral enforcement of the law within the Civil Rights Division. “I was told by Voting Section management that cases are not going to be brought against black defendants for the benefit of white victims,” he said, “that if somebody wanted to bring these cases it was up to the U.S. Attorney, but the Civil Rights Division wasn’t going to be bringing it.” Adams testified that instruction was communicated to the Voting Section management by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes. He further testified from personal knowledge that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes addressed the attorneys in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, saying that Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, which attempts to prevent voter fraud, would simply not be enforced by the present Administration. “‘We have no interest in enforcing this provision of the law, he quotes her as saying. “‘It has nothing to do with increasing turnout, and we are just not going to do it.’” “I was shocked,” he said. “It was lawless.”

Even our colleague Michael Yaki, the Pelosi-appointee to the Commission, has agreed that if such statements were in fact made, someone should be fired. Yet Commissioner Thernstrom declined to vote at our meeting of July 16 to support efforts to obtain the testimony of the one witness — Justice Department career attorney Christopher Coates — who could confirm or deny the allegations. She continues to belittle the investigation in the media.

Gerald Reynolds, Chairman
Peter Kirsanow, Commissioner
Ashley Taylor, Commissioner
Gail Heriot, Commissioner
Todd Gaziano, Commissioner

07/29 10:01 AM

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.