AG Eric Holder Obstructing Justice in Investigation of Black Panther Intimidation Case Dismissal

Voter intimidation was rampant in Philadelphia on election day 2008, where members of the New Black Panther Party in black berets, black combat boots, black shirts and black jackets intimidated Caucasian voters with racial insults, slurs and a nightstick. Another party member was accused of managing, directing and endorsing their behavior. The entire event was captured on videotape.

In January, the Justice Dept filed a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party. When the court date arrived In April, a federal judge had ordered default judgments against the Panthers after they refused to respond to the charges or appear in court, basically a guaranteed win.

The Justice Department was in the final stages of seeking sanctions when a delay in the proceedings was ordered by Loretta King, who was serving as a political appointee as the acting assistant attorney general. Ms King ordered the case dropped. That ruling was issued after she met with Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, the department's No. 3 political appointee, who approved the decision to dismiss the complaint, according to interviews with department officials who sought anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case. (source)

The Obama Justice Department was sending a clear message to groups resorting to intimidation for the purpose of hijacking elections. They are free to harass Americans on their way to the voting booth as long as they are supporting the right candidate.

That wasn't good enough for the US Commission on Civil Rights, a federal agency, decided to investigate the Justice Department trying to get to the bottom of why the charges were dropped. But the Attorney General of the "most transparent administration in history" is not cooperating. In fact the number one man in the country, the man charged with seeking truth for the entire country is obstructing justice by telling members of his staff to ignore subpoenas.

The new developments last week were as follows:


First, a Web site called "Main Justice" reported on Wednesday (and we have since confirmed) that the Justice Department has, for now, ordered two key career attorneys not to comply with a subpoena about the case issued by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission, by law, has explicit power to issue subpoenas, and the law mandates that "all federal agencies shall cooperate fully with the commission." The Justice Department, however, is citing internal regulations stemming from a 1951 case to support its order to ignore the subpoena.

One of the attorneys, J. Christian Adams, has been advised by his personal attorney, former South Carolina Secretary of State Jim Miles, that failure to comply with the subpoena could put him at risk of prosecution. "I can't imagine," Mr. Miles told The Washington Times, "that a statute that gives rise to the power of a subpoena would be subjugated to some internal procedural personnel rule being promulgated by DoJ." In short, the department is stiffing the commission and unfairly putting its own employee in a legal bind.

Second, that same day, the two Republican House members with top-ranking jurisdiction over the Justice Department, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia and Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, issued a joint statement calling Justice Department delays "a cover-up," and "a pretense to ignore inquiries from Congress and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights." At a hearing on Thursday, Mr. Smith said that "continued silence by the Justice Department is an implied admission of guilt that the case was dropped for purely political reasons."

Third, at the same hearing, Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, accused Justice Department Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez of not being "truthful" while under oath, to such an extent that "there are people who have gone to jail" for such a level of purported "dishonest[y]."

The disputed statement, from what appeared to be prepared remarks by Mr. Perez that he later repeated insistently, was that "the maximum penalty was sought and obtained" against the one Black Panther for whom the charges were not entirely dropped. The bizarrely weak penalty consisted of a mere injunction for the Black Panther not to brandish a weapon near a polling place, within Philadelphia, through Nov. 15, 2012. In short, he is prohibited, only within Philadelphia and only for four years, from doing something that is illegal anyway.

Gee that doesn't sound like a maximum penalty, that sounds like perjury.

As all of this was going on, Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, the No. 2 man in the whole department, was announcing that very morning that he will resign after less than 10 months in office. Mr. Ogden - whose possible involvement in the Black Panther case had been specifically mentioned in the Civil Rights Commission's subpoena - became the third high-ranking Obama legal official to announce a resignation in the last month. He was preceded by White House counsel Gregory Craig and deputy White House counsel Cassandra Butts.

Was this the reason for Ogden's resignation? Either way, something smells, and the department charged with seeking justice is obstructing justice.

"Holder and them have done a terrible job on this," Mr. Wolf told The Washington Times. "This has just been handled so poorly.... You can't hide these things. There is something wrong here. There is something very wrong. When it all comes out, I think it will be very bad."