WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has tried to hide the involvement of highlevel political officials in the dismissal of a voter-intimidation lawsuit against members of the New Black Panther Party, a federal commission concluded in a draft report.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said the department’s reversal in the case indicates that its Civil Rights Division is failing to protect white voters and is “at war with its core mission of guaranteeing equal protection of the laws for all Americans.”
The commission was scheduled to vote on the draft report at its meeting Friday. However, the vote was postponed after a Democratic panelist walked out of the meeting in protest.
The Justice Department denied the allegations in the report based on the commission’s year-long investigation into the Obama administration’s handling of the 2008 case. The Bush administration had filed a voter-intimidation lawsuit against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia who were videotaped outside a polling place, one carrying a nightstick. The Obama Justice Department dismissed most of the case.
“The department makes enforcement decisions based on the merits, not the race, gender or ethnicity of any party involved,” said spokesman Tracy Schmaler. “We are committed to comprehensive and vigorous enforcement of the federal laws that prohibit voter intimidation.”
The commission, which is controlled by a bloc of conservative and libertarian members, could not reach a quorum Friday because commissionerMichael Yaki, a Democratic appointee and a former senior adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, refused to participate. The commission needs five members present to meet quorum.
“This has been a procedural and partisan farce from the beginning,” Yaki said in an impromptu news conference. “It’s not my responsibility to make aquorum for this kangaroo court ... they want to score political points against the Obama Justice Department.”
Members of the commission’s majority, who drafted the report, denied they were motivated by politics and accused Justice Department officials of blocking their investigation, failing to turn over key documents and instructing witnesses not to testify.
“The degree of stonewalling that the Justice Department has engaged in is unprecedented in the 53-year history of the commission,” said commissioner Todd Gaziano, a senior fellow in legal studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He said the commission would vote on the 131-page report at its meeting next week.
The report is the latest fallout from case’s dismissal, which angered conservatives and congressional Republicans and sparked two internal Justice Department inquiries and the commission investigation. A draft copy was posted Thursday on the website TPMMuckraker.
In Philadelphia, two New Black Panther Party members stood outside the polling placeon Election Day 2008. No voters complained, but the Bush administration sued them, the national party and chairman.
The Obama Justice Department dismissed charges against three defendants and obtained a narrowed writ against a fourth.
The commission’s draft report said the “repeated attempts to obscure” the involvement of political appointees in the dismissal “raise questions about what the department is trying to hide.”
The report accuses the department of stonewalling the investigation. Schmaler disputed that, saying they provided more than 4,000 pages of documents.
The commission’s findings are based mostly on testimony of two Justice Department attorneys involved in the case and media reports, including a Washington Post article that said the case tapped into divisions within the department over whether the agency should focus on protection of historically oppressed members of minority groups or enforcement of laws without regard to race.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 10/30/2010