A new president, a clean start at DOJ

The phrase “out with the old, in with the new” is nothing new but a Justice Department led by Donald Trump might look decidedly different.

One likely target of the Trump administration is the highly politicized Civil Rights Division within the DOJ, predicts criminal law analyst John Malcom of The Heritage Foundation.

“They have been particularly aggressive about challenging voter integrity measures,” Malcolm says, referring to voter I.D. laws the DOJ opposed in Texas and other states, and sued to stop them.

Under President Barack Obama, the Justice Department slow-walked and in some cases withheld documents about ongoing investigations into Hillary Clinton’s email server from Congress.

Eric Holder, the former attorney general, was held in contempt of Congress for ignoring a congressional subpoena over the “Fast and Furious” scandal.

In another case a federal judge in Texas ruled the DOJ was “unethical” and “intentionally deceptive” in an immigration case.

The federal agency sued North Carolina over that state’s restroom law, and it joined with the U.S. Department of Education to force public schools to allow transgender males into girls’ restrooms and locker rooms or risk losing federal funds.

In yet another school-related decision, the DOJ has claimed public schools were unfairly disciplining minority students and threatened legal action.

One of the most infamous decisions by the DOJ was dropping the 2008 voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party, when the Obama administration took over the agency in 2009.

Three Black Panther members, dressed in fatigues, were filmed in Philadelphia brandishing a nightstick and intimidating white voters outside a polling place. One voter said he was called a “cracker.”

Then there are the multiple cases of the Justice Department taking over local law enforcement when a police shooting was suspected of being racially motivated.

Jim Pasco of the National Fraternal Order of Police says the DOJ’s findings were almost always twisted.

“When you’ve got parts of the city with the astronomically highest crime rates, that’s where the police are going to patrol,” he explains. “And that’s where the stops are going to be made.”

It wasn’t a racist thing, he says. It’s where the crime is happening.

“But when the stats come out,” says Pasco, “they’re made to appear that police are discriminating against minority groups or ethnic groups.”

Despite riots and a rally cry of “Hands up, don’t shoot” after the shooting of Michael Brown, the DOJ in 2015 cleared Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson, Mo. police officer, who shot and killed Brown.

The same report faulted the police department for numerous civil rights violations.
Malcolm says he expects a Trump-led Justice Department to be far less overtly political and certainly not focus solely on racial issues.

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