On Friday, John Hinderaker at Power Line posted an article about the results of the Civil Rights Commission’s inquiry into the Justice Department’s handing of the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case.  The Civil Rights Commission released their final report on the case Thursday.

The article quotes Civil Rights Commissioner Todd Gaziano:

“After a year of DOJ’s intransigence and baseless refusals to comply with our subpoenas, two Department attorneys bravely defied orders to testify before the Commission: the former Civil Rights Division Voting Section chief, Christopher Coates, and a lead trial attorney in the NBPP case, J. Christian Adams. Their testimony and the sworn affidavits from former DOJ staff portray a pervasive culture of hostility to race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws in the Civil Rights Division. The detailed allegations include: a former section chief who doctored a memo to try to prevent a meritorious case from being filed against black defendants, racially offensive statements by several supervisors and staff, and repeated instances of harassment and intimidation directed against anyone willing to work on lawsuits against minority defendants.”

The video of the voter intimidation incident can be found at You Tube.  Based on that video, it seemed like an easy case, but that’s not the way it was handled. 

The article quotes part of Commissioner Gail Heriot’s statement on the case:

“[T]he actual activities of the Voting Section have been consistent with the policy statements Ms. Fernandes is alleged to have made and not with Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez’ efforts to assure the Commission that the Division operates race neutrally (made long before Adams’s and Coates’s whistle-blowing testimony). The New Black Panther Party case was indeed disposed of over the vociferous objections of the line attorneys who had worked on the case and against the advice of career attorneys in the appellate section. This is exactly what one would expert if the allegations against Ms. Fernandes [i.e., that the Obama Justice Department enforces the law in a racist manner] were true. No further voter intimidation cases (whether brought under Section 11(b) or the more commonly used Section 2) have been filed against African American defendants–again, exactly as one would expect.”

I have no idea what action will be taken as a result of this report, but it is very troubling to me that the Justice Department has lost its objectivity in supporting voting rights.