By Tribune-Review

Published: Tuesday, July 31, 2012, 8:57 p.m.
Updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

A federal court at last has confirmed what most suspected all along: Political appointees were involved in the Obama Justice Department's puzzling dismissal of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

The role of politics in Justice's decision-making was widely questioned after the case was cut loose despite video evidence showing a party member brandishing a nightstick outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008.

Judicial Watch sought answers, filing a Freedom of Information Act request for relevant documents. The Justice Department ignored it. The legal watchdog group then filed a lawsuit to obtain the records.

In a ruling awarding some litigation fees and costs sought by Judicial Watch, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia noted that the group was right about politics' role — and deception by a senior Justice official:

“The documents reveal that political appointees within DOJ were conferring about the status and resolution of the New Black Panther Party case in the days preceding ... (its) dismissal ... which would appear to contradict Assistant Attorney General (Thomas) Perez's testimony that political leadership was not involved in that decision.”

And that confirms, too, the emptiness of “transparency” boasts by this administration, which instead obfuscates, deceives and politicizes whenever it thinks doing so can advance its perverted agenda.

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