Brad Wilmouth
Newsbusters.org
January 16, 2010
On Thursday’s The O’Reilly Factor, FNC host Bill O’Reilly updated viewers on the Black Panthers voter intimidation case from election day 2008 — involving a Pennsylvania polling place — which Attorney General Eric Holder declined to prosecute despite strong video evidence. The most recent development, on Wednesday the House Judiciary Committee voted to block any action on the case, as all 15 Democrats voted to reject action while all 14 Republicans voted in favor of more investigation.
O’Reilly: “But yesterday the House Judiciary Committee voted 15-14, along partisan lines, not to compel the Justice Department to hand over investigative data in the case. As you may know, Attorney General Holder has stonewalled the investigation, and now the Dems are apparently letting them get away with it.”
Guest Kris Kobach, a former Bush administration official, recounted the severity of the case:
This is a very serious case of voter intimidation under section 11B of the Voting Rights Act. And, remember, the charges were brought in January of 2009, and these guys didn’t even answer the charges, which is the legal equivalent of basically admitting that you’re guilty. And so the Department of Justice had victory in its hands, and then the new Holder Justice Department came in and said, “No, we’re dismissing the charges against two of the three thugs and against the party, as well.” Only the guy that had the nightstick had an injunction against him, so very, very troubling because rarely would a prosecutor or the U.S. Justice Department drop charges after they’ve already effectively won the case…
…Yeah, this is very disturbing. The excuse that the majority of the committee gave when they decided not to pursue asking the Justice Department to hand over the information was, “Oh, we just think this is an isolated incident.” No, it’s not an isolated incident when you take it in context. In a typical year, the Justice Department gets maybe two or three complaints of voter intimidation. In 2008, they got 48 complaints of voter intimidation. And then take the broader context of hundreds of complaints of voter fraud across the country. And so it was clear that many people brought credible complaints of efforts to take away the integrity, to affect the integrity of our elections, and voter intimidation and voter fraud go hand in glove. This isn’t isolated incident…
Read the entire transcript at Newsbusters.org
