Obama Black Panther coverup goes further with dismissal of career attorney

Eric Holder covers up

AP Wire Photo

Veteran Civil Rights Division attorney Christopher Coates is no longer chief of the Voting Section, according to the division's Web site.

There was no official announcement of the personnel change in the long-troubled section, which most recently has been embroiled in the controversy over the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case. Main Justice noticed the change on the Voting Section Web site.

Main Justice reported on the Black Panther controversy, omitting damaging facts like hiring practices in the thirty year period prior to the Bush Administration. The unwieldy partisanship of the two political appointees making the decisions on the Black Panther case was also not reported by Main Justice. Neither was the self labeling of one inspector general's sources, who called himself a "proud Democrat."

Loretta King, as reported by former career Justice attorney Hans Von Spakovsky, has a history. King and her colleague, Steve Rosenbaum, are political hacks, according to Spakovsky writing for NRO.

Those two lawyers, Steve Rosenbaum and Loretta King, are two of the worst political hacks to be found in the career ranks of the Civil Rights Division (I have previously written about King's ambition to run for office in Maryland on the Democratic ticket). But putting that aside, Rosenbaum hasn't worked on a voting case since he left the Voting Section in 1994. King hasn't worked on a voting case since she left the Voting Section in 1996.

Did the Obama administration seize the moment, with the media distracted by the failed terrorist attempt, to remove Coates? An earlier report frequently quoted to disparage Bush era appointees was written by Democrats, according to Spakovsky's Heritage Foundation report.

The New York Times identifies Fine and Marshall Jarrett, the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which helped prepare the report, as "two veteran Justice Department watchdogs." Yet the OPR lawyer Jarrett assigned to conduct the investigation, Tamara Kessler, is a liberal former Civil Rights Division lawyer who actually worked alongside many of the leading critics identified in the report. Equally incredible, one of the Inspector General's lawyers assigned to probe the hiring practices of former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brad Schlozman, was none other than Mark Masling, also a former Civil Rights Division attorney and self-proclaimed "proud Democrat." In other words, there was never even any pretense of neutrality, distance, or objectivity. One would think that two "veterans" like Fine and Jarrett would recognize the importance of avoiding personal bias and the basic conflict of interest in having liberal former CRD career lawyers investigating the hiring of CRD career lawyers. Yet both overlooked or deliberately ignored this obvious impropriety.

Truth can be stranger, and more interesting, than fiction. However, Main Justice might want to consider reporting all the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.