This afternoon I was leaked a copy of the OPR report on the New Black Panther Party case, which I've posted on over at Greg's. Key point here is that the NBPP team failed to do due diligence on their own case, causing the leadership to distrust the strength of the suit. That, not some sort of latent anti-white racism or pressure from above, was the reason for narrowing the case:
We've written about the weakness of the NBPP case here before, but it's important to reiterate that the leadership at the civil rights division was concerned about the legal issues in the case, not some ideological belief against protecting white voters. In fact, Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, who the conservative commissioners on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights all but accused of acting to protect the NBPP on behalf of Obama, told the civil rights division leadership that it he trusted them but that “doing nothing” on the case would be unacceptable. In other words, the person conservatives accused of protecting the NBPP stated flatly that the case should not be dismissed outright.
Attorney General Eric Holder, whom conservatives have also smeared as a racist, was told of the case in a meeting on May 5. The attendees at that meeting all agreed that Holder “did not offer any direction or explicitly approve King’s course of action.” In other words, the accusation leveled by GOP House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, that the Obama administration protected the NBPP, is patently ludicrous.
The other thing that's clear from reading the OPR report is that this had a lot to do with the transfer of power and influence during the transition. The Bush folks were suddenly no longer in charge, and they were deeply resentful of being told what to do by people they felt shouldn't be running things. Ryan Reilly also has a writeup here.
