Holder’s Withholding

By Mr. Curmudgeon:

A U.S. District Court ruling supports the House Republican’s claim that Attorney General Eric Holder is a contemptible withholder of evidence and the Obama administration’s cover-up artist extraordinaire.

Since the news of Operation Fast and Furious broke, Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darrell Issa, has buried the Justice Department in enough subpoenas to wallpaper every office in the joint.

To date, Holder has failed to provide House investigators the names of Justice Department personnel responsible for selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels and high-level Justice officials privy to the operation.

Now, the first controversy to embroil the nation’s top law enforcement official, the New Black Panther Party case, is back in the headlines. And we have the public-interest law firm Judicial Watch to thank.

As you may recall, on Election Day 2008 a video surfaced showing members of the New Black Panther Party stationed outside the entrance to a Philadelphia voting precinct. They were wearing barrettes and paramilitary garb and wielding batons, shouting, “white devil” and “you’re about to be ruled by the back man, cracker.”

In a court affidavit obtained by Fox News, a poll watcher swore to seeing “two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”

A criminal investigation into the matter that began in the waning days of the Bush Administration was later dropped by the Justice Department’s so-called Civil Rights Commission once Holder took the reins.

“Claims were dismissed against the … defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law. The department [of Justice] is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who intimidate, threaten or coerce anyone exercising his or her sacred right to vote,” read a Justice Department statement.

J. Christian Adams, a trial attorney for the voting section at Justice, resigned in disgust. In his letter of resignation, Adams pointed to the threats leveled by Panther leaders against the attorneys that filed suit against them. “Their grievances toward us generally echo the assertions that the facts and law did not support the lawsuit against them … Knowing intimately the criminal character and violent tendencies of the members of the New Black Panther Party, it is my profound hope that these assertions are tempered.”

That was then.

Monday, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ruled that “political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding the DOJ’s dismissal of claims in the case, which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General Perez’s testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.”

And here’s where the judge alludes to the culture of stone-walling in Holder’s department: “Surely the public has an interest in documents that cast doubt on the accuracy of government officials’ representations regarding the possible politicization of agency decision-making.”

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton’s reaction to the ruling was priceless: “The Court’s decision is another piece of evidence showing the Obama Justice Department is run by individuals who have a problem telling the truth. The decision shows that we can’t trust the Obama Justice Department to fairly administer our nation’s voting and election laws.”

That’s because, as Operation Fast and Furious clearly shows, Eric Holder’s Justice Department IS a criminal enterprise