President Obama's Justice Department has dropped charges of voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members. They had been accused in a civil complaint by the Bush Justice Department of coercion, threats, intimidation, and hurling racial slurs while at a Philadelphia polling station on Election Day last year. Prosecutors say one of the men brandished a nightstick near the polling-place door.
Bartle Bull, a civil rights lawyer and former campaign manager for Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign, said in an affidavit that the behavior he witnessed last year in Philadelphia was "the most blatant form of voter intimidation. 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."
None of the defendants answered the lawsuit and the Justice Department would have prevailed by default, but the department chose to obtain a default judgment against only a single defendant. It allowed the New Black Panther Party and two other individual defendants to walk away. A spokesman sent me a statement saying that Justice was satisfied that it had obtained "an injunction that prohibits the defendant, who brandished the weapon, from doing so again. Claims were dismissed from the other defendants based on a careful assessment of the facts and the law."
This is eyepopping stuff. Mr. Bull said two members of the New Black Panther Party were at the polling place he visited. He heard one scream at voters: "Now you will see what it is like to be ruled by the black man, cracker." Mr. Bull was shocked. He told Fox News that, even having worked as voting rights lawyer in the South in the 1960s: "I have never, ever seen anyone blocking the door to a polling place with a weapon and yelling at people."
He also said he was told by Christian Adams, the senior Justice lawyer working on the case, that if the Philadelphia example wasn't a clear case of voter intimidation, nothing would be.
So why did the Obama Justice Department punt? Mr. Bull has no specific knowledge but notes that the original Bush civil complaint had aimed at enjoining all 28 of the New Black Panther Party's chapters around the country from certain activities. He believes the decision was politically motivated: "They're protecting the environment of what the party might do. And it's going to give them a lot more authority in the next election."
With Justice refusing to provide any further explanation, suspicions are bound to linger. One of the defendants, Jerry Jackson, is an elected member of Philadelphia's 14th Ward Democratic Committee and was a credentialed poll watcher for the Democratic Party last Election Day. The Obama Justice Department dropped all charges against him.
Hans von Spakovsky, a former official in Justice's Civil Rights Division under President Bush, told me he was shocked by Justice's turnaround in the Philadelphia case: "Imagine if the defendants had been white and been intimidating voters and Justice had dropped the case. There would have been a political earthquake." In the days since Justice's action, however, there has been little outcry or media notice. A serious danger is that, without more questions being asked, the Obama Justice Department may feel emboldened to look the other way at election law violations it finds politically inconvenient.
-- John Fund
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