Debo Adegbile Is No John Adams

A smiling and smarmy Hilary Shelton of the NAACP took to The Kelly File last night to compare Debo Adegbile to John Adams. Adegbile is President Obama’s radical nominee to head the Justice Department Civil Rights Division. While at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Adegbile oversaw the inexcusable defense of cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, among other radical policies.

Shelton and other NAACP officials are trying to repair the endangered nomination by comparing Debo Adegbile to John Adams. Adams, you see, represented British solider Hugh White who fired into the crowd in Boston, killing Americans. Adams took on the unpopular representation at White’s criminal trial.

Nice try, Hilary, but Debo Adegbile is no John Adams. While everyone has a constitutional right to a court appointed lawyer for trial, the NAACP’s representation of Mumia isn’t even close.

I was on Fox and Friends this morning to talk about the differences:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kYhhYcLtgE

Mumia had been convicted and represented by counsel at his trial decades earlier. The NAACP was involved in a federal habeus corpus challenge to his conviction thirty years later.  This was a civil case, not a criminal one. At this stage of court proceedings, there is no constitutional right to counsel. This is particularly so when a murderer loses before the federal trial court, and appeals an adverse decision. Adams, in contrast, was representing White at the first stage of a criminal proceeding where we now believe the accused has a fundamental right to court appointed counsel.

But there are bigger and more toxic distinctions between John Adams and Debo Adegbile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7cgwFXDa_w

If John Adams appeared at rallies for the British against the colonists and talked about how proud he was to represent a British solider, the comparison might be more accurate. That’s exactly what NAACP lawyers working for Debo Adegbile did. (Video here.)

Adams was content to keep his work inside the courtroom, making sure that Hugh White enjoyed a fair criminal trial where all the rights of Englishmen were respected. Adegbile presided over a racially toxic campaign to discredit American law enforcement officers as racist.

That’s why the Fraternal Order of Police and other law enforcement organizations are against his confirmation.

Had John Adams appeared before the king’s governor and complained about his cousin Sam Adams, and how John was on the side of the king in the larger battle of ideas between England and her colonies, the Shelton’s comparison would be apt. But John Adams did no such thing.

The NAACP, however, took on the Mumia case because it believed in his broad cause and his complaints about a structurally racist American justice system. The NAACP lawyers, including Adegbile, took on Mumia’s cause as their own. They did not merely provide fair representation inside the courtroom. The NAACP took their crusade outside the courtroom.

If Adams had adopted the Tory cause outside the courtroom and lashed out at the insanity of the colonists, Shelton’s comparison would be true.  Had Adams crusaded against the American colonists on the streets of Boston, Shelton would have a point.  But he didn’t.  Adams was a patriot.

And what did the NAACP LDF do outside the courtroom? They peddled the corrosive and divisive notion that police departments around the country are infested with bigots and racists. This explained, you see, why Mumia was wrongly convicted in the pervasively racist Philadelphia.  They incorporated Mumia’s grievances against America as their own.

The NAACP took Mumia’s case because they agreed with what Mumia was saying about structural racism in America. The NAACP was charmed by Mumia’s celebrity status among the left, and the NAACP fundraised off of it.

Rep. John Conyers calling for the release of Mumia.

John Adams suffered financially from his representation of Hugh White. The NAACP grabbed cash from all the crackpots who think Mumia was framed.

Which raises an important question Hilary Shelton and Debo Adegbile ought to answer: do you think Mumia did it? Maybe someone can ask them.

John Adams knew that Hugh White fired into the crowd. Adams represented him when nobody else would to make sure White got a fair trial, not to spring a cold-blooded killer free. But that is exactly what the NAACP LDF still aims to do — to “Free Mumia,” as tens of thousands of racialist leftists have been chanting for decades.

The “Free Mumia” crackpots have petitioned Eric Holder for action. Celebrities and elected officials have called for the murderer to be released from prison. And the NAACP LDF is still seeking that outcome. Mumia has become an organizing fulcrum for the racialist left.

So there was no shortage of lawyers who would help Mumia. The NAACP injected themselves thirty years after Mumia’s conviction because they sympathized with his cause. They crave a piece of the Mumia action.

That’s what disqualifies Debo Adegbile from serving in the United States Department of Justice. It says all you need to know about his attitude toward the American justice system, police officers everywhere, and what he will be inclined to do to police departments once he has the power to investigate them for federal civil rights violations.

UPDATE: The official Twitter feed of the cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal attacked the widow of officer Danny Faulkner for appearing on The Kelly File this week.  Mumia asks for donations in a tweet.  No word if the NAACP Legal Defense Fund will get any donations received.