Hearing Scheduled for Friday Morning Regarding Dismissal of Black Panther Voter Intimidation Case

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is scheduled to convene its hearing at Friday (9:30 a.m. Eastern) on the matter of the Department of Justice’s dismissal last year of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members. The order to drop the charges came after prosecuting attorneys had drafted a motion of default judgment to secure a conviction.

A pattern of meetings between White House officials and key political attorneys leading up the actual decision to spike the case and a code of secrecy within Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department concerning any details has left a trail of questions. Rigid stonewalling by Department officials has been successful in quarantining all information, leading some to believe that the Obama administration may have a toxic issue they are working very hard to hide.

The Civil Rights Commission hearings come after months of unfulfilled requests to gain access to case documents and Justice Department attorneys and staff who worked on the prosecution of an alleged polling place incident in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008 in which the defendants were accused of having used racial slurs and brandished a weapon, purportedly to harass and scare off targeted voters.

Despite being aware of the charges and having legal representation, the defendants elected not to respond or appear at court proceedings and yet, after a flurry of meetings involving Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli and White House officials – some as-yet unnamed – the command was given to raise the white flag when a conviction had all but been won.

Videotape from the scene clearly shows the two Black Panthers standing at the entrance to a voting location, each dressed in paramilitary garb and combat boots. One of the men carries a nightstick in full view.

In a sworn affidavit, Bartle Bull, an eyewitness at the polling place and a notable civil rights lawyer who campaigned for Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, declared that aggressive language was used by the New Black Panthers including racially-charged incitations such as “cracker.” Bull also gave his account to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in a televised interview. The videotaped evidence of one citizen journalist’s encounter with the Philadelphia Panthers is part of the Bull interview segment:

Among other eyewitnesses, Bull is slated to appear at the Commission hearing, as are U.S Congressman Wolf, who has been active in the House in urging for full transparency about the case, and Acting Associate Attorney General Gregory Katsas.

At issue for the Civil Rights Commission is whether the decision by political appointees in the Justice Department to drop three of four criminal charges against the men and the NBPP (the fourth was pled out with minimal impact to the defendant), at a time when career attorneys handling the case were poised to deliver a motion for default judgment, was politically motivated. Because the case was filed not only against the individual defendants who were present at the scene, but against the national New Black Panther Party, Commissioners have also been interested to learn if prosecutors found evidence of similar incidents.

Still unknown is the identity of an unnamed White House official with whom Perrelli met on two occasions just prior to the decision to spike the case was made and handed down to the prosecuting team.

We know from forty years of grading Presidential scandals that it is not the deed that does in the chief executive, it is the cover-up. We can only hope that President Obama and Attorney General Holder have sent their representative to the Commission to supply what the American public deserves — the unvarnished truth.

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Previous Articles

• The Obama Administration and The Black Panthers: Postcards From Post-Racial America
• Sources: Black Panther voter intimidation case hearing rescheduled

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