Uh oh: DoJ lawyer to testify tomorrow on voter-intimidation case dismissal

posted at 12:15 pm on September 23, 2010 by Ed Morrissey

When the Civil Rights Commission attempted to discover why the Department of Justice dropped a voter-intimidation case they had already won, the Obama administration told the attorneys in the Civil Rights division to ignore subpoenas from the panel.  At the time they complied, but one of the key potential witnesses to the decision has decided to break his silence.  In an exclusive, Pajamas Media has the letter from Christopher Coates requesting an immediate audience before the Commission:

In a dramatic development that could shake the political leadership of  the Justice Department, career lawyer Christopher Coates has sent a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights offering to testify Friday on matters related to the controversial New Black Panthers voter-intimidation case. Click here or on the screen capture below to read Coates’ letter in PDF form …

Ten months ago, Coates, the award-winning former chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, was subpoenaed by the Commission to testify about the case. He was subsequently instructed by DOJ officials to ignore the subpoena. Within the past hour, commissioners were informed that Chairman Gerald Reynolds had spoken with Coates and that the chairman would reconvene the Commission’s ongoing hearing on Friday at 9:30 a.m. to hear Coates’s testimony.

The Civil Rights Commission has sought to obtain Coates’ testimony on Justice’s dismissal of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case in Philadelphia. In a recent request to Justice, the Commission agreed to limit initial questioning of Coates to accusations made by former career lawyer J. Christian Adams about statements and other actions by Julie Fernandes, an Obama administration political appointee, if DOJ produced Coates.

The DOJ refused.

That refusal apparently means that the Commission will not feel obligated to honor those restrictions in the hearing tomorrow.  That means that the panel will almost certainly ask wide-ranging questions about the politicization of the CRD and attempts by the White House and Attorney General Eric Holder to squelch prosecution not just in the case of the New Black Panther Party activists in this case, but in other civil rights cases as well.

Coates’ decision to defy the DoJ and presumably the White House to comply with the subpoena cannot be good news for Barack Obama or Holder.  Clearly they did not want the career attorneys to speak openly about what has been happening within the CRD or the DoJ.  The only one to do so, J. Christian Adams, quit his post to blow the whistle on political pressures being placed on career attorneys concerning prosecutions and compliance efforts on other parts of the various voting regulations, including the necessity of states to remove ineligible voters from the registration rolls.

Expect some fireworks tomorrow.  If Coates is this motivated to testify, he must have something explosive to say.  That could put Holder back on the hot seat with Congress and have Obama looking to cut some people loose to contain the damage.

Tags: ,

Related Posts:

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

Trackbacks/Pings

Trackback URL

Comments

Comment pages: 1 2

Been to many TEA party rallies, have you? Or are you merely engaging in rectal speak?

As usual…

JohnGalt23 on May 24, 2013 at 1:46 PM

As I just posted HotairLib has their whole head up their six o clock.

hamradio on May 24, 2013 at 2:43 PM

Who wrote the speech? Or are you just praising the messenger?

mixplix on May 24, 2013 at 2:57 PM

MSNBC consensus: Obama’s speech was historic, amazing, “one of the best of his presidency”

Connect the dots: journolist meeting by invitation only at the White House on, what Tuesday?, “big”speech by Obama on Thursday, lame stream media fawning over speech on Friday. Who would have seen that coming, huh?

parke on May 24, 2013 at 2:58 PM

They need the “war on terror” in order to further erode our Constitutional freedoms and to deflect criticism from the administration’s and Federal government’s ongoing corruption.

They are just trying to massage it so that they don’t offend the Muslims, international Libtards and their own sensibilities anymore than necessary.

A few Muslim terrorists here and there are quite expendable to this Administration despite their sympathies for them. These drone attacks also do much deflect any potential criticism that the Administration is weak in dealing with such matters.

Dr. ZhivBlago on May 24, 2013 at 2:59 PM

MSNBC is nothing but a left wing propaganda machine serving their master, Obama.

rplat on May 24, 2013 at 3:07 PM

Nobel Peace Prize that he totally earned a mere nine months into his presidency? Yeah, that one.

I believe that he was officially nominated 10 days after he was sworn in. Wow! The WON really worked long hours that week and a half to earn that POS medal. During those ten days he ordered NO DRONE STRIKES to keep his peaceful record clean.

fred5678 on May 24, 2013 at 3:22 PM

Obama: Don’t worry about that Ben Ghazi guy. I killed Bin Laden, and Bush didn’t!

And Obummer still wants to close Gitmo? Good luck with that–not even Upchuck Schumer was willing to hold trials in New York!

Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:24 PM

They need the “war on terror” in order to further erode our Constitutional freedoms and to deflect criticism from the administration’s and Federal government’s ongoing corruption.

They just changed the definition of terrorist. They used to be jihadis from the Middle East–now they’re Minutemen in Arizona and Tea Partiers in Ohio.

Steve Z on May 24, 2013 at 3:29 PM

…bromides about what we’re told are President Foreign Policy’s miraculous yet still oddly unmaterialized abilities to move us drastically closer to world peace.

Erika, sometimes your writing shows signs of rivaling even the Master of Snark himself, Allahpundit. Good work!

KS Rex on May 24, 2013 at 3:45 PM

I love how crazy Al invoked the Nobel Peace Prize in praise of a speech that spoke about dropping bombs on people’s head. Maybe it was the “fewer” bombs than before that raised this to historic levels.

Do they even know or care that they are morons.

marnes on May 24, 2013 at 3:46 PM

His speech made less sense than Bluto’s Animal House Speech and was far less entertaining. Nothing less than base rallying time. Never thought I would say this, but Code Pink was the best part.

DDay on May 24, 2013 at 4:01 PM

Sperling posted this at the Examiner on May 23 about this “historic speech of Obysmal’s:

During his foreign policy speech Thursday afternoon, President Obama warned that domestic terrorism would increase in the modern age of the Internet.

“[T]his threat is not new,” Obama said. “But technology and the Internet increase its frequency and lethality.”

Obama warned Americans that materials on the Internet could influence people to commit terrorist acts.

“Today, a person can consume hateful propaganda, commit themselves to a violent agenda and learn how to kill without leaving their home,” he said.

To combat domestic terrorism, Obama reminded Americans that it was important to reach out to Muslim communities.

“The best way to prevent violent extremism is to work with the Muslim American community — which has consistently rejected terrorism — to identify signs of radicalization and partner with law enforcement when an individual is drifting towards violence,” he said. “And these partnerships can only work when we recognize that Muslims are a fundamental part of the American family.”

You see, we are just not working hard enough to “work with the Muslim American community” who are a “fundamental part of the American family.” Watch out, too, because Obysmal is again trying to limit the impact of the Internet.

onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:22 PM

That Chris Hayes is a bit of a twink, isn’t he?

onlineanalyst on May 24, 2013 at 4:25 PM

Obama apparently gave two speeches yesterday and I watched the other one.

myiq2xu on May 24, 2013 at 5:03 PM

Didn’t take you that long to inject the man’s race into this didn’t it? And you wonder why blacks will never accept you tea billies hate the man simply because he’s a black man occupying the “people’s” house.

HotAirLib on May 24, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Nah. I’d detest the little pissant s.o.b. if he was white…or Asian…or any one of the myriad of made-up racial divisions.

Solaratov on May 24, 2013 at 11:00 PM

Comment pages: 1 2