In its ongoing effort to pry information out of the Justice Department regarding the dismissal of the New Black Panther voter-intimidation case, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last Friday sent a letter to Joseph P. Hunt, Director of the Federal Programs branch of the Civil Division. The letter, a copy of which I have received, in part reads:
Your refusal to schedule a meeting even to discuss the Commission’s pending discovery requests and depositions suggests that DOJ is not interested in working to develop a path that will allow each agency to fulfill its statutory obligation. As you are aware, the Commission first began requesting related information from the Department on June 16, 2009, six months ago. After six months passed without a substantive response from DOJ, the Commission felt it necessary to issue subpoenas.
And as it did in its discovery requests, the Commission hints that there was perhaps some unusual collaboration between the lefty lawyers in the Obama Justice Department and their ideological soul mates in the left-leaning civil rights community. (“According to news reports, however, DOJ shared sufficient common ground to consult with an outside advocacy group concerning aspects of the New Black Panther Party litigation, prior to the Department’s dismissal of most of the charges.”) This may, in part, explain the Justice Department’s reticence to turn over documents to the Commission. It might finally reveal the ideological underpinnings and the political calculus at play in the decision to dismiss an egregious case of voter intimidation.
So the Commission is plowing ahead. And what about those depositions of the trial team, which brought on the New Black Panther case and whose legal judgment was squashed by Obama’s political appointees? Well, those may be back on:
The Commission also agreed to postpone the deposition of Department personnel so that they and the Department could discuss any timing issues, or in an extraordinary case, to determine whether the President will invoke executive privilege to prevent the employees from providing certain testimony. A meeting would have clarified any outstanding issues related to the depositions. The Commission will set new deposition dates for the Department employees in the next few weeks, and may consider subpoenaing other Department personnel during the same time. If the Department does not want to discuss these issues, then the Commission will have to act without its input as to the individuals and timing of such depositions.
It seems as though the most transparent administration in history is now in full Nixonian stonewall mode. We’ll see if this tactic has a similarly disastrous result.