Thread: Probe in New Black Panther Case

Wonder if Obama will turn face in order to get some needed White votes?

The Justice Department’s internal watchdog is investigating allegations that its civil rights division enforced voting laws in a racially discriminatory manner, officials said Monday.

The review by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine is an outgrowth of the political controversy over a 2008 voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. Some conservative lawyers, politicians and commentators have said that the civil rights division improperly narrowed that case, part of their broader allegations that the Obama Justice Department has failed to protect the civil rights of white voters.
The department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is looking into the matter, and two Republican congressmen, Frank R. Wolf (Va.) and Lamar Smith (Tex.) asked Fine to also investigate the department’s handling of the case, according to letters the congressmen sent Fine over the summer.

Fine, in a letter Monday to the congressmen, wrote that his office will not investigate the New Black Panther case specifically but is initiating a broader review of how the Justice Department enforces voting rights laws.
The letter, released by both congressional offices, said the review will focus on what types of cases the civil rights division’s voting section brings and whether it enforces the law “in a non-discriminatory manner.”


But conservatives contend that the Obama administration has itself become politicized, and they have focused their ire on the New Black Panther case. Filed weeks before the Obama administration took office, it focused on two of the party’s members who stood in front of a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008, one carrying a nightstick and identifying himself as “security.” The men were captured on video and accused of trying to discourage some people from voting.

Former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams recently told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which held a series of hearings on the matter, that he believed the case had been narrowed because some in the civil rights division were interested in protecting only minorities.

washingtonpost.com

Top DOJ Official Describes Recent Controversy As "He Said, She Said," Insists Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division on Wednesday strongly disputed accusations by a department colleague that the Obama administration avoids prosecuting minorities in civil rights cases, saying it all amounts to a "'he said, she said' thing" and that he "tends to judge people by their actions," not their words.
It's the first time Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez has weighed in since Justice Department lawyer Christopher Coates accused Perez's office of being "hostile" toward "race-neutral enforcement" of voting rights laws.

For more than a year, Republicans have been questioning why the Obama administration reversed course on a federal lawsuit against two members of the New Black Panther Party, who some say intimidated Pennsylvania voters on Election Day 2008. The issue came to a head in late September when Coates, who was heavily involved in the initial filing of the case, defied the Justice Department and testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, whose conservative majority has led a lengthy and often contentious investigation into the matter.

"I strongly disagree with Mr. Coates," Perez told reporters gathered in a Civil Rights Division conference room in Washington. "You look at our enforcement actions in the Obama administration in the voting context, and you see cases where we've had African-American defendants and white victims, and you see cases that involve white defendants and African-American victims

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