Race-obsessed Thomas Perez’s chairmanship at DNC a valuable gift for the GOP

President Barack Obama’s handpicked U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division head Thomas Perez just may turn out to be a valuable gift to the Republicans after Perez was selected as the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). What sweetens the deal is the selection of former Nation of Islam member Keith Ellison as alleged racist Perez’s assistant, according to a number of law enforcement officers who’ve had dealings with the Obama DOJ.

While serving at the DOJ one of the prosecutors claimed that civil rights cases in which the alleged victims were white males were given low-priority and the Perez routine included abandoning a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party that resulted in a “travesty of justice.” Christopher Coates, the former voting chief for the department’s Civil Rights Division, testified at a hearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, after outcries from citizens’ groups and public-interest organizations over the Justice Department’s stonewalling a full investigation.

Coates alleged that DOJ officials working for Perez — who appeared to always be on the same page as Attorney General Eric Holder — for political reasons, were told to dismiss intimidation charges against New Black Panther members. The militants were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 dressed in their black military-style uniforms — one was brandishing a police baton also known as a nightstick — and the allegedly hurled racial slurs at whites attempting to vote.

But Perez reportedly prohibited him from testifying and subsequently transferred him to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Carolina.

However, Mr. Coates later informed the Commission that he would appear at the hearing and read a statement, after which he will be available for Commissioners’ questions. But that didn’t stop the Justice Department from dismissing all of the charges against the defendants. Democratic election lawyer Sam Hirsch was involved in the DOJ decision to dismiss its voting rights case against the New Black Panther Party for Self Defense, according to FOIA documents.

“The records, described in a Vaughn index produced pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, contradict sworn testimony by Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, who testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that no political leadership was involved in the decision Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice,” state the government corruption watchdog, Judicial Watch.

The “Vaughn index” details a series of emails between Assistant Deputy Attorney General Steve Rosenbaum and Deputy Associate Attorney General Sam Hirsch, who was described by Slate magazine as a “DC election lawyer who represents a lot of Democrats” prior to joining the Justice Department, according to the public-interest group known for its investigation of public corruption.

The index describes eight email exchanges between Rosenbaum and Hirsch, taking place on April 30, 2009, the day before the Justice Department reversed course and declined to pursue much of the Black Panther case. Listed among the email correspondence:

An “Email Chain with Attachments” from Rosenbaum to Hirsch dated April 30, 2009: The email chain includes “…a detailed response and analysis of the proposed draft filings in NBPP (New Black Panther Party) litigation…The response includes a candid assessment of legal research and raises questions about the case law and proposed relief….This document also contains attorney discussion, opinions, and analyses of the draft documents and case law.”

The records disclosed to Judicial Watch seemingly contradict testimony by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on May 14, 2010. The Commission, an independent, bipartisan unit of the federal government charged with investigating and reporting on civil rights issues, initiated a probe of the Justice Department’s decision to drop its lawsuit. During the hearing, Perez was asked directly regarding the involvement of political leaders in the decision to dismiss the Black Panther case:

COMMISSIONER KIRSANOW: Was there any political leadership involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case any further than it was?

ASST. ATTY. GEN. PEREZ: No. The decisions were made by Loretta King in consultation with Steve Rosenbaum, who is the Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General.

Perez also suggested that the dispute was merely “a case of career people disagreeing with career people,” which was a lie especially since Rosenbaum is a Democratic Party insider, some say a political hack.

At the hearing in the commission’s Washington D.C. headquarters, J. Christian Adams accused the DOJ of racial bias for dropping charges against the New Black Panther Party. An attorney on the case, Adams testified that within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division there is a pervasive and open hostility towards equal enforcement of the law. So insidious is this attitude that, according to Adams, even a minority DOJ employee was harassed by DOJ Voting Section staff for working on a case with white victims.

To support his allegations regarding the culture of the Civil Rights Division, Adams cited numerous first and second hand accounts. Notably, he stated that Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes told him personally that the division is “in the business of traditional civil rights work.”

“The Black Panther decision [was] a scandal for the Obama administration and it merits serious attention by investigators. Assistant Attorney General Perez seems to have been less than candid in his sworn testimony when he said no political appointees were involved in the decision,” Judicial Watch’s President, Tom Fitton said.

Among the shenanigans reported, Assistant Attorney General] Perez claims [Los Angeles County officials] discriminate against blacks and Latinos when it comes to providing federally-subsidized housing known as Section 8, even though 86% of the Section 8 recipients in both cities are minorities, according to the county commissioner Michael Antonovich who represents the area.