Eric Holder’s 'Fair' Investigation in Ferguson?
by Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund 22 Aug 2014
Attorney General Eric Holder travelled to Ferguson,
Missouri, Wednesday to personally intervene in the investigation of the police
shooting of Michael Brown, an unprecedented and highly questionable move. In a
column published in the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, Holder claimed that the Justice Department would
conduct an investigation that would be “fair” and “independent.” But given
Holder’s biased views on race and the history of his tenure at DOJ that we
outline in our new book, “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric
Holder’s Justice Department,” we have serious doubts that his
department can conduct an impartial investigation. This is particularly true
given the hostility he displayed towards
law enforcement when he claimed at a meeting with local community groups that
he had been supposedly targeted by police for speeding in New Jersey and
jogging through Georgetown because he is black.
The issue in Ferguson is possible police misconduct.
Investigating such misconduct is the responsibility of the Criminal Section of
the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The primary mission of this
Section is to prosecute individual police officers under 18 U.S.C. §§ 241 and
242. These criminal statutes prohibit officials who are acting under color of
law from willfully depriving individuals “of any rights, privileges, or
immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United
States.” In this case, the government must prove that Officer Darren Wilson
used excessive force against Brown during the apparent confrontation that the
two had. If Wilson is convicted, the punishment can be extremely severe, including
life in prison or the death penalty.
The unrest in Ferguson has obviously been triggered by
unproven – and increasingly unlikely, given the emerging evidence – allegations
that Brown was targeted by Officer Darren Wilson because of his race. Brown is
not only a suspect in the robbery of a convenience store, but Wilson was
apparently severely injured in the struggle with Brown. The notion that Wilson
deliberately targeted Brown, let alone used vastly excessive force in the
interaction, seems a bit dubious at this point. Still, Holder has dispatched a
team of lawyers from the Criminal Section to supervise over 40 FBI agents sent
to Ferguson to investigate this tragic situation. The attorneys “deployed to
lead this process,” says Holder, are the “Civil Rights Division’s most
experienced prosecutors.”
What Holder did not say is that it is these “experienced
prosecutors” in the Criminal Section who he is so “proud
of,” along with lawyers in the U.S. Attorneys’ office in New Orleans, who were
accused last year by a federal judge in Louisiana of “grotesque prosecutorial
abuse.” In a shocking 129-page order
in a civil rights prosecution of New Orleans police officers after Hurricane
Katrina, the judge castigated the Justice Department, using terms like
“skullduggery” and “perfidy” to describe the misbehavior of prosecutors. This
included making anonymous postings on the website run by the New Orleans Times-Picayune
that “mocked the defense, attacked the defendants, and their attorneys, were
approbatory of the United States Department of Justice, declared the defendants
obviously guilty, and discussed the jury’s deliberations.”
One of the Criminal Section’s lawyers involved in this unethical
behavior was Karla Dobinski, the lawyer assigned to make sure the defendant
police officers’ rights were not violated by the prosecutors using privileged
information such as the compelled testimony provided by the officers to
internal investigators at the police department. The judge was appalled that
the lawyer assigned to ensure that the constitutional rights of the defendants
were protected was personally fanning the “flames of those burning to see [the
defendant] convicted” before the jury even got the case.
One of the FBI agents used “shockingly coercive tactics”
against defense witnesses. Because of threats of prosecution by the lead
prosecutor in the case, Barbara “Bobbi” Bernstein, another Criminal Section
lawyer, three of those witnesses refused to appear at trial on behalf of the
police officers. The judge found it highly suspicious that 26 months after the
trial, not one of those potential witnesses who could have provide exculpatory
evidence had “been charged with any crime whatsoever.”
The judge spent ten pages just describing the ethical rules
and federal regulation violated by Justice lawyers. And he clearly believed
that the Holder Justice Department had tried to hide what happened because he
said that trying to get information out of the Department was like “slowly
peeling layers of an onion.” Neither Dobinski nor Bernstein were fired by the
Division for their inexcusable behavior.
This case demonstrated a “secure-a-conviction-at-any-cost”
attitude by Holder and his lawyers. The judge pointed out that the indictment
in the case had been “announced with much fanfare, a major press conference
presided over by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and widespread media
attention.” A DOJ spokesman said the indictment was “a reminder that the
Constitution and the rule of law do not take a holiday – even after a
hurricane.” But as the judge reminded Holder, “the Code of Federal Regulations,
and various Rules of Professional Responsibility, and ethics likewise do not
take a holiday – even in a high-stakes criminal prosecution.”
Unfortunately, these lawyers are typical of the career staff
in the Criminal Section. As outlined in a series of articles that von Spakovsky
and J. Christian Adams did on hiring at the Civil Right Division during
Holder’s tenure, the career ranks have been filled with radical, left-wing
lawyers who are hostile to law enforcement. In the Criminal Section, this includes one lawyer
who argued in a published article that tough law enforcement policies against
violent youth should be abandoned because it “could exacerbate the problem of
disproportionate minority contact.” Another new lawyer spent most of her career
prior to arriving at DOJ representing murderers facing the death penalty. Still
another lawyer complained in a report about the confinement of dangerous
criminals in federal supermax prisons.
Frankly, the Justice Department should step back and allow
state and local officials to investigate what happened. There is no evidence
that these local officials are not conducting a competent, objective
investigation. And given the biases and checkered history of the Attorney
General and the Civil Rights Division, as well as the complete politicization
of DOJ by Holder, we can have no confidence in the credibility of an
investigation by his Department.
Eric
Holder
Eric H. Holder Jr.
is the attorney general at the U.S.
Department of Justice for the Barack
Obama administration, a trustee at the Morehouse
School of Medicine, and was an intern at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund.
Note: Louis W. Sullivan
was the president of the Morehouse
School of Medicine, and is an Oak
Bluffs (MA) homeowner.
Spike
Lee is an Oak Bluffs (MA)
homeowner, and married to Tonya Lewis
Lee.
Spike Lee Hopes 'Things Will
Really Blow Up' if Ferguson Officer Is Acquitted (PAST RESEARCH)
Tonya Lewis Lee
is married to Spike Lee, and a
director at the NAACP Legal Defense
& Educational Fund.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the NAACP Legal Defense &
Educational Fund.
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society.
Henry Louis
Gates Jr. is a director at the NAACP
Legal Defense & Educational Fund, a Harvard University professor, and an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner.
Harvard Professor Jailed; Officer Is Accused of Bias
(PAST RESEARCH)
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: July 20, 2009
Professor Gates, who
has taught at Harvard for nearly two decades, arrived home on Thursday from a
trip to China to find his front door jammed, said Charles J. Ogletree, a law professor at
Harvard who is representing him.
Charles J. Ogletree
Jr. is a director at the NAACP
Legal Defense & Educational Fund, a Harvard Law School professor, an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner, was Barack
Obama’s college mentor, and edited a
campus Black Panthers newspaper called The Real News.
Obama Mentor Charles Ogletree
on 'Three Days of Rioting' in Ferguson: 'It's Just Starting' (PAST RESEARCH)
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Vernon E. Jordan Jr. is a senior director at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund,an Oak Bluffs (MA) homeowner, Valerie
B. Jarrett’s great uncle, a director at the American Friends of Bilderberg
(think tank), and a 2008 Bilderberg conference participant (think tank).
Valerie B. Jarrett
is Vernon E. Jordan Jr’s great niece, the senior
adviser for the Barack Obama
administration, and a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago.
R.
Eden Martin is the president of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and counsel at Sidley
Austin LLP.
Newton
N. Minow is a member of the Commercial
Club of Chicago, and a senior counsel at Sidley Austin LLP.
Michelle
Obama was a lawyer at Sidley Austin
LLP.
Barack
Obama was an intern at Sidley Austin
LLP.
No comments:
Post a Comment