Investigation of 'antiwhite bias' grows
Justice official accused of saying: No more cases against blacksPosted: July 06, 2010
By Brian Fitzpatrick
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights today suggested it is expanding its review of claims that
the Department of Justice has implemented a ban on prosecuting defendants who are black.
The comments came at a hearing in Washington at which commission members asked witness J. Christian Adams to provide the names of other Department of Justice attorneys who might shed further light on his allegation that
the DOJ is afflicted by a "culture of hostility" toward prosecuting black perpetrators of voting-rights violations against white victims.
Commissioner Gail Heriot asked Adams to provide a "list of attorneys in the department who could corroborate" his testimony, indicating that the commission plans to expand its investigation of racial bias in the Department of Justice.
Also, Adams revealed that some DOJ staffers were disciplined for harassing other departmental attorneys because they held "evangelical religious views" and worked on a case brought against a black political activist in Mississippi.
Adams, until recently a top trial attorney in the voting section of the DOJ, testified that staffers throughout the department have subscribed for years to the notion that
the DOJ's primary responsibility is to protect the voting rights of minority voters, not whites.
He added that recent Obama administration DOJ appointees have reinforced this notion by making such
racial discrimination a formal departmental policy.
According to the former DOJ attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandez, an Obama appointee at the top of the department, announced at a policy meeting that "
the voting section will not bring any other cases against blacks and other minorities."
Instead, the department will focus on "traditional" civil-rights cases, was the suggestion.
Adams testified that Fernandez also said the department
"has no interest in enforcing" the section of the Motor Voter law that requires local jurisdictions to purge the voting rolls of ineligible voters, even deceased voters, because "it has nothing to do with increasing turnout."
Commissioner Peter Kirsanow asked Adams "to what extent" the department believes equal treatment before the law applies to all voters.
"That's the problem," replied Adams. "They assume
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act doesn't apply to white voters."
Adams pointed out that over the past 45 years, the department has brought hundreds of cases against whites violating the rights of ethnic-minority voters, but only two cases against blacks violating the rights of whites.
Commissioner Ashley Taylor observed, "The division's policy can be found in the cases it brings."
Adams said the DOJ's attitude toward racial neutrality will be demonstrated in mid-July when the department has to choose a course of action in the next phase of a case against black political leader Ike Brown of Knox City, Miss. "If they don't object to the submission, they will be [saying] that section 5 does not apply to white victims."
Adams resigned from the department after he was ordered by his superiors to drop a case prosecutors already had won – the notorious New Black Panther Party intimidation of voters in a majority-black precinct in urban Philadelphia on Election Day in 2008.
Amateur videographers had caught New Black Panther Party activists on video wielding a baton, intimidating the elderly black man serving as the Republican poll watcher and
calling for the murder of white babies in their cribs.
One of the four New Black Panther Party members charged in the case is also an elected Democrat holding a local office.
When they were ordered to drop the case, Adams and the team of DOJ lawyers had already won the case by default because the New Black Panthers declined to defend themselves in court. At that point in the proceedings, the DOJ team was simply waiting for the judge to assign penalties against the New Black Panthers.
Adams claimed that the decision to drop the case was made by Obama political appointees, and that the decision to drop a case that was already won was "unprecedented."