Yesterday, a source close to the conservative-dominated U.S. Commission on Civil Rights provided me with a letter from Commission General Counsel David P. Blackwood to the Justice Department indicating that the commission's politicized inquiry into the New Black Panther Party voter-intimidation case had turned into an open-ended investigation.
The letter, addressed to the Civil Division, demands that the Justice Department make several of its employees available for deposition. But the paragraph itself implies a larger scope for the investigation than was originally intended:
Absent further word from the Department, the Commission expects that all relevant documents will be produced and that the depositions of Department officials Loretta King, Steve Rosenbaum, Julie Fernandes, and Sam Hirsch will take place on the dates scheduled, without pre-condition or other limitation. After the testimony is received, the Commission will decide whether to include the acquired information in its pending interim report or in some other format. As you may have noted, the Commission’s investigation has extended beyond Fiscal Year 2010, an action taken due to the Department’s lack of cooperation. The investigation has no set date of expiration.According to Democratic Commissioner Michael Yaki, the commission never voted on making it an "interim" report or an open-ended investigation."We've never voted on that, we've never discussed that. This is completely outrageous," Yaki said, calling the investigation a "McCarthyite witch hunt."
In response to Blackwood's letter, the Justice Department, in a statement written by Joseph Hunt of the Civil Division, said that they had agreed to provide depositions only if DoJ was allowed to look over the commission's deposition transcripts and a copy of the report itself so they could raise objections to "errata" in either, and that they would not make the employee depositions available under the commission's "unilateral" terms.
The DoJ's inspector general is already investigating the Civil Rights Division, and the likelihood of a House inquiry led by Rep. Darrell Issa makes the need for an ideologically stilted investigation even more redundant than it already is. But the decision to make the investigation open-ended means that when the White House gets to replace two commissioners in December, they'll be voting to quash an "active" investigation if they choose to do so.
Since the commission only has life as part of the annual appropriations process, the new Republican majority could vote to deny the commission funds unless it continues the investigation. It would be an unceremonious end to the rich history of the commission, which conservatives have spent the past few years trying to discredit through their own reckless mismanagement of its priorities. But even if they didn't actually follow through on blocking the commission's funding, they could drag the investigation back into the news merely by threatening to do so.
