Home > Uncategorized > Clear Intimidation Dismissed by Eric Holder

Clear Intimidation Dismissed by Eric Holder

January 14, 2010 No Comments

Remember this during the election? A clear attempt at intimidation, and with weapons, no less.

Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, calls "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen". Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia. (Some of this behavior is on YouTube – below.)

One of them, they say, brandished a nightstick at the entrance and pointed it at voters and both made racial threats. Mr. Bull says he heard one yell "You are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker!"

Blatant campaigning within Polling Place

Another violation of the LAW, but Eric Holder, our Attorney General is not upholding the Law as he swore to do.

Yes, President Obama's Justice Department (i.e. Eric Holder) stonewalled all questions about why it dropped a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

Back in the first week of January, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring voters with the weapon, uniforms and racial slurs. In March, Mr. Bull submitted an affidavit at Justice's request to support its lawsuit.

None of the defendants filed any response to the complaint or appeared in federal district court in Philadelphia, so the Justice Dept would have prevailed by default.

Instead, the department in May suddenly allowed the party and two of the three defendants to walk away. WALK AWAY! If that were the KKK, do you think Eric Holder would have done the same? You know damn well not and the HYPOCRISY rules.

There was outrage over the decision among Congressional Republicans, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division—especially after it was learned one of the defendants who walked was Jerry Jackson, a member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee and a credentialed poll watcher for the Democratic Party last Election Day.

Then the Washington Times reported on July 30 that six career lawyers at Justice who had recommended continuing to pursue the case were overruled by Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli—a top administration political appointee. One of the career attorneys, Appellate Chief Diana Flynn, had urged in an internal memo that a judgment be pressed against the defendants to "prevent the paramilitary style intimidation of voters" in the future.

Mr. Wolf's demands that Justice make the career attorneys on the case available for questions have been rebuffed. He also wants the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings. A spokesman for House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers was noncommittal as to whether any hearing would be held.

President Obama needs to clear the air. As a former law professor who specialized in voting rights, he knows exactly how illegal this is. In 2007, then-Sen. Obama introduced a bill to protect Americans from tactics that intimidate voters. It also increased the criminal penalty for voter intimidation to five years in prison from one year. And yet…he lets these cretins go!

Mr. Obama should insist his Justice Department reinstate the Black Panther case or provide a full explanation for why it was dropped.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that.