National Review Joins Call to Investigate Obama’s Justice Department

The flagship publication of the conservative movement has joined the call to investigate Barack Obama’s Justice Department. In his his article on NRO entitled “Investigate Racism in the Obama Justice Department,” Andrew C. McCarthy agrees the department’s racially charged dismissal of the Black Panther case represents a “crime” and Congress has the Constitutional obligation to end the “criminalization of the Justice Department.”

Taking note of the Republican Party’s new Pledge to America, McCarthy begins:

If the Republican party is interested in making…a pledge that will resonate with the vast majority of the American people — here’s a suggestion: Promise an unwavering commitment to the principle of equal protection of the law for every American citizen. Promise, therefore, that Congress will investigate weighty allegations that the Obama Justice Department is engaged in racist law-enforcement practices.

Promise, moreover, that any executive-branch high official who has conspired to deny American citizens equal protection, or who has obstructed justice in an effort to cover up such a conspiracy, will be impeached and removed from office.

McCarthy has an unimpeachable background in the law and high-stakes investigations. A former federal prosecutor, he investigated terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman and the al-Qaeda bombing of two U.S. embassies in 1998. His endorsement brings significant legal gravitas to the argument that administration officials, possibly up to and including the president, have run afoul of their legal and constitutional functions and should face impeachment.

McCarthy’s article covers the legal background of the case, familiar to readers of this website. Last Friday, career Justice Department lawyer Christopher Coates, who once headed the Voting Rights division, testified the department retreated from a case it had already won after pressure from the president’s political allies (especially the NAACP), and under the direction of Obama’s political appointees. Coates told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights the DoJ holds a “deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the” law “for the protection of white voters.” (Read Coates’ full testimony here.)

In other words, the U.S. Justice Department is a racist institution dedicated to denying white people equal protection under the law. That, notes McCarthy, is a violation of every canon of American jurisprudence.

In addition to the racial discrimination in applying justice, the Black Panther case may involve perjury and obstruction of justice. The third-ranking official in the Department of Justice, Thomas Perez, testified under oath that there had been no “political leadership involved in the decision not to pursue this particular case.” However, new documents show Democratic Party lawyer and political appointee had been deeply involved in the “deliberations.”

In a passage reminiscient of this website’s previous reporting, McCarthy wrote: “These include deputy associate attorney general Sam Hirsch (a former Obama campaign operative who has pushed for the race-based Balkanization of Hawaii).” This author posted a long expose of Sam Hirsch on this website last Tuesday. It read, in part, “Racial balkanization appears to be a pastime of his. He favored the Akaka bill, a race-based bill to grant native Hawaiians tribal rule (and a large chunk of 1.8 million acres of federal land under dispute), having testified on its behalf in August 2009.”

McCarthy adds that both Perez and the DoJ’s second in command, David Ogden, played a role in the case.

If Perez lied under oath, as it increasingly appears he did, that constitutes perjury and obstruction of justice. If he acted on orders from above, and he almost invariably did, his superiors should share the blame — and the witness stand.

McCarthy’s argument holds closely to the racial discrimination angle. He listed a number of Obama administration/DoJ policies that endanger this country, including closing Guantanamo Bay and obstructing the War on Terror, Obama’s decision (and erratic reversal) to release photographs of Muslim detainees abused by American soldiers, his threat to prosecute Bush-era investigators for “torture,” and his demonizing the CIA in general. McCarthy leaves these at the level of policy differences.

Perjury and lesser charges are touched upon, but he focuses instead on the Obama administration’s racial hijacking of the justice system. He writes that, even more “damning” than the “dismissal of the Panthers case and the dissembling over it,” is “evidence that DOJ hews to a policy of racially discriminatory enforcement of the civil-rights laws.”  McCarthy concludes this violation of fundamental legal principle requires action:

The Constitution guarantees all Americans equal protection under the law. The civil-rights laws, moreover, make it a crime for government officials to deprive “any person” — not any black or minority person, but any person, period — of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.” It is a grave violation of law for the Justice Department to practice racial discrimination in deciding which cases it will bring, to determine that Americans of one race or class are not entitled to the same protection as all Americans.

That’s not just politicization of the Justice Department. It is criminalization of the Justice Department. Under the Constitution, it is Congress’s obligation to stop it. The current Congress obviously won’t do its duty. Americans will strongly support congressional candidates who pledge to right that wrong.

Thus, one of the featured writers of conservatism’s most prestigious magazine has endorsed the call for an investigation — and “impeachment” — of anyone involved in this travesty. Those proceedings should be among the first undertakings of any new Republican Congress elected in November.