Politics-not the law–drives President Barack Obama’s Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder, conservatives charged Thursday, renewing now-familiar allegations against the Democratic administration.
Speaking at a panel discussion hosted by conservative public interest group Judicial Watch, the organization’s Tom Fitton, former DOJ Civil Rights Division official Hans von Spakovsky, Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund and Debra Burlingame of Keep America Safe expressed concern that politics played a role in decisions made by the DOJ during the Obama administration. Their criticism centered on the DOJ’s handling of a case against the New Black Panther Party, the Defense of Marriage Act and terrorism suspects.
The discussion comes one day after the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility said that race and politics played no role in DOJ’s handling of the New Black Panther case.
But that did not deter the conservatives. Fitton said the controversies involving the DOJ have drawn concern about the direction Holder is taking the DOJ.
“We knew Holder would be a disaster as Attorney General,” said Fitton, who is the president of Judicial Watch. “But even I could not have predicted just how bad the situation would get on his watch. A review of Holder’s record so far makes one wonder how he remains Attorney General.” The organization recently filed suit to try to force the Justice Department to release records detailing possible meetings between DOJ officials and the NAACP to discuss the New Black Panther Party case.
von Spakovsky took aim at the decision by the DOJ to drop most of the charges in the civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party in 2009, saying he wasn’t satisfied with the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility conclusion released this week that politics or race did not play a role in DOJ decisions related to the case. He said, for instance, that OPR officials did not interview White House officials as part of the probe. He also charged that Holder attempted to dictate OPR’s conclusions.
The George W. Bush administration filed the civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members in the waning days of his presidency. It alleged the New Black Panther Party members intimidated voters by wearing military-style clothing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood during the November 2008 election. One of the men held a nightstick.
Republicans have blasted the Holder DOJ over the Department’s handling of the case, expressing concern that politics had a role in the DOJ’s decisions in the case. Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) prodded Holder on the case this month at a House hearing, claiming that the Attorney General allows reverse racism to thrive in the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Holder vehemently denied the allegation.
The conservative-led U.S. Commission on Civil Rights spent most of the last two years probing the DOJ’s handling of the case. The commission said in a report on its investigation that the department did not completely address “serious accusations” made by former DOJ Civil Rights Division J. Christian Adams and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Civil Rights Division Voting Section, about opposition in the DOJ to taking up voting rights cases against minorities.
“The federal laws enforced by the Justice Department were intended to protect all Americans regardless of color,” von Spakovsky said. “I never assumed when I worked there as the Obama administration did that I could ignore my duty to enforce the law.”
Nimocks, who is senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian nonprofit organization, focused his disapproval of the DOJ on its announcement last month that it would no longer defend the 1996 law that restricts the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. He said the decision on the Defense of Marriage Act raises questions about the role politics may have played.
The Obama administration previously had supported the defense of the law. But Holder said last month there was no longer a reasonable argument to be made in the defense of the statute, citing a changed legal landscape concerning homosexuality.
“When you look at the whole ball of wax and the legal analysis, it seems very clear that the decision here is not one based necessarily on the rule of law but is a more politically or ideologically driven decision, which puts the rule of law at risk,” Nimocks said.
Burlingame, who co-founded Keep America Safe, which aims to enhance national security, expressed concern with Holder’s support for using the federal court system to handle some terrorism matters.
The Attorney General has faced backlash from Republicans and Democrats over his November 2009 announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices would be tried in a Manhattan federal court as part of Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center. But since the announcement, the White House has said that it would consider using military commissions for the prosecutions and review other locations for a civilian trial.
“I believe the Holder Justice Department, which is ideologically married to the policies of his boss, the Obama administration itself, to demilitarize this war,” Burlingame said. “And a lot of the policies that are coming out of the Justice Department are aimed at doing just that.”
