On the day President Obama was elected, armed men wearing the black berets and jackboots of the New Black Panther Party were stationed at the entrance to a polling place in Philadelphia. They brandished a weapon and intimidated voters and poll watchers. After the election, the Justice Department brought a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and those armed thugs. I and other Justice attorneys diligently pursued the case and obtained an entry of default after the defendants ignored the charges. Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case.
The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney.
The federal voter-intimidation statutes we used against the New Black Panthers were enacted because America never realized genuine racial equality in elections. Threats of violence characterized elections from the end of the Civil War until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
Here are the serious charges:
Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the dismissal and the DOJ's skewed enforcement priorities. Attorneys who brought the case are under subpoena to testify, but the department ordered us to ignore the subpoena, lawlessly placing us in an unacceptable legal limbo.
The assistant attorney general for civil rights, Tom Perez, has testified repeatedly that the "facts and law" did not support this case. That claim is false. 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. Let's all hope this administration has not invited that outcome through the corrupt dismissal.
Most corrupt of all, the lawyers who ordered the dismissal - Loretta King, the Obama-appointed acting head of the Civil Rights Division, and Steve Rosenbaum - did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation. Just as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. admitted that he did not read the Arizona immigration law before he condemned it, Mr. Rosenbaum admitted that he had not bothered to read the most important department documents detailing the investigative facts and applicable law in the New Black Panther case. Christopher Coates, the former Voting Section chief, was so outraged at this dereliction of responsibility that he actually threw the memos at Mr. Rosenbaum in the meeting where they were discussing the dismissal of the case. The department subsequently removed all of Mr. Coates' responsibilities and sent him to South Carolina.
I guess the Obama Administration appointees are all illiterate, or just willfully stupid. No, it is more likely they have an agenda meant to divide people and make them into subservient, warring and sparring groups that can then be manipulated and controlled.
Well, the libs at Justice didn't take this lying down. They came out with anonymous sources and all sorts of other spectral evidence that Adams was some Unibomber type or something.
And here is the response to the sliming of Adams by Adams himself through nightshirt media:
all it Panthergate, call it what you will. The Department of Justice (or its minions) is already attempting to slime its whistleblower J. Christian Adams — the attorney who recently resigned from the Department over its abandonment of the New Black Panther case.
Now Adams has struck back, telling Pajamas Media that the DOJ’s smears were a “blatant lie.”
Adams appeared on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show to tell his story Tuesday, following which a “source familiar with the case” came forward, trying to tarnish the lawyer’s reputation. Pajamas Media was informed by a Fox producer:
The person said that any story should include the fact that Adams only left DOJ after being put into a job he disliked, and that he has long been an advocate of conservative views. Source also says Adams’ claims are “willfully inaccurate.”
This battle had been brewing for several days since Adams — using the Panther case as an example — asserted in the Washington Times, and then in more detail in Pajamas Media, that institutionalized bias had infiltrated Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Civil rights complaints would only be pursued when initiated by people of color against white people.
When it was the other way around, the complaints, even when well-substantiated as with the New Black Panthers, would disappear in a bureaucratic morass.
The attacks on Adams — whether from the “anonymous source” or from DOJ spokesperson Tracy Schmaler — were of surprising ferocity, indicating nervousness on the part of the Department.
Adams told Pajamas Media:
I was appalled and disappointed by the DOJ yesterday. They included a blatant lie in their response to my interview. They told Fox News I had been “unhappy with my position.” Not only would this be a personnel matter they aren’t supposed to discuss, it’s a fairy tale. In fact on April 28 I got a promotion, so maybe they can let me know what position I was unhappy with.
…
The problem with smearing me is that there are many others who know the truth inside the Department. Documents which they refuse to turn over pursuant to subpoenas from the Civil Rights Commission prove it.
