Civil Rights Commission Accuses DOJ of Stonewalling Reverse Racism Probe
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has released an interim report that accuses the U.S. Justice Department of stonewalling an investigation into the DOJ’s handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.
The Justice Department failed to turn over critical documents about its decision-making process and refused to allow testimony from those with first-hand knowledge, according to a press release by the commission. “The department’s efforts to stonewall the commission’s investigation were largely successful until two career staff attorneys testified before the commission in defiance of the department’s ban, at great professional risk to themselves,” the press release says.
The lawyers, Christopher Coates and J. Christian Adams, testified that some Justice Department personnel were reluctant to work on voting cases in which the defendant was black and the victim was white, the press release says.
The conservative-dominated commission approved the report last month in a 5-2 vote, with the Democrats dissenting, Main Justice reported at the time. Now the report (PDF) has been posted on the commission’s website, according to the press release and stories by the Associated Press and MyFoxPhilly.com.
The criticism stems from the Justice Department’s decision to drop a complaint alleging that two members of the New Black Panther Party stood outside a polling place in November 2008 dressed in military-style clothing, one of them wielding a nightstick. The department did obtain an injunction requiring the party member with the nightstick to stay away from polling stations.
“Evidence obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by a third party indicates that this matter was not simply a difference of opinion between career attorneys,” the report says. “Instead, the record of communications within the department appears to indicate that senior political appointees played a significant role in the decision making surrounding the lawsuit. The involvement of senior DOJ officials by itself would not be unusual, but the department’s repeated attempts to obscure the nature of their involvement and other refusals to cooperate raise questions about what the department is trying to hide.”
