Obama Justice Department Laughed Off Armed New Black Panther Threat

In 2009 and 2010, lawyers working at the United States Justice Department warned top Obama political appointees and other Justice Department officials about the dangerous threats of New Black Panthers to kill police officers and other whites. I was one of those lawyers who delivered those warnings.

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Our warnings came in the context of the Voting Rights Act case I and other lawyers brought against the New Black Panthers on behalf of the United States in 2009, a case the Obama administration ultimately abandoned.  Both top DOJ officials, including now Labor Secretary Tom Perez, as well as rank and file employees in the Civil Rights Division, were warned but did not take the New Black Panther threat seriously or otherwise considered the organization to be a laughable joke.

Allies in the media echoed the narrative that the defendants in the voter intimidation case were harmless clowns.

Among the information presented to top officials was a video produced by the New Black Panthers entitled “Training Day.” The video proposes killing police officers by ambush.  I wrote about the video:

Another New Black Panther posing in the above photo and kneeling with a shotgun is “Field Marshal” Najee Muhammad. As I wrote in my book InjusticeOne of them was Panther “Field Marshal” Najee Muhammad, who is seen in a Panther video called “Training Day” in which he encourages blacks in DeKalb County, Georgia, to don ski masks, lie in wait behind shrubs, and kill police officers with AK-47s. Following that exhortation he mocks the hypothetical victims’ grieving widows.

Justice Department employees ridiculed the video and noted very few were in the video’s audience, apparently oblivious of the role and power of social media to reach people not sitting in an auditorium.

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Attorneys working on the voter intimidation case made an effort to broadly educate employees of the Civil Rights Division about the murderous rhetoric of the New Black Panthers. We planned a screening of a National Geographic special on the New Black Panthers where members could be heard threatening to kill white babies.  We widely disseminated information about the screening in a Justice Department conference room.  On a floor with nearly one hundred employees, exactly two DOJ employees showed up to watch the screening, and one of them was the paralegal on the case.

As we shall see, Obama allies in the media could also be counted on to ridicule the seriousness of the New Black Panther organization.

Next: Did Dallas shooter Micah X. Johnson participate in an anti-cop New Black Panther march last year? (VIDEO)

The Obama Justice Department has also continued to give New Black Panthers who are in possession of illegal firearms a pass.  I wrote here about New Black Panther (and Democrat) Jerry Jackson:

Jackson has a long violent criminal history. He is also a Democratic Party elected official in Philadelphia, not that those two facts have anything in common, of course. He was elected in May 2010 to a seat on the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee in the 14th Ward. … It is illegal under federal law (18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1)) for any felon to possess a firearm. As one federal prosecutor told me, “these cases are among the simplest to win. It’s like taking candy from a baby. Did a felon hold a gun, or not? Period. It matters not if the gun was loaded, or even works.”  So, is the Democrat New Black Panther Jerry Jackson indeed a felon?  . . . According to this criminal complaint, in 1978, Jackson “with another black man did stab and rob comp[lainant] on the highway 4024 W. Girard Ave. . . Charged: robbery, theft, possession of an instrument of a crime, probation offense with a weapon, criminal conspiracy, simple assault and aggravated assault.” On January 10, 1979, Jackson was sentenced for robbery and criminal conspiracy convictions, both first degree felonies under Pennsylvania law.

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The Justice Department surely must be aware of the fact that Jackson and other New Black Panthers are felons in possession of firearms given the attention the matter has received. I have talked about this fact on Fox News repeatedly.  Yet nothing has happened to them.  Is it because, like Hillary, they are Democrats?

King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson

King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson

As President Obama’s pastor put it, these chickens may have come home to roost.

Bob Price has this piece: Confirmed: Dallas Shooter was Member of Houston New Black Panther Party.  The story has a disturbing video of an armed New Black Panther march in Texas where the armed uniformed panthers chant, “Off the pig” and “Oink, oink, bang, bang.”  They also note “Revolution has come. Time to pick up the gun.”  The piece states:

One of the members holding an AR-15 style rifle appears to be Micah Xavier Johnson.  During the march, the armed members of the New Black Panther Party stood off against Harris County Sheriff’s Deputies who came to Waller County responding to a request for assistance from Sheriff Glenn Smith

You can see the full video here of the Houston New Black Panthers armed formation and chants to “off the pig” with the individual armed with an M-16 with his finger positioned above the trigger guard as someone trained in firearms would do.

Since the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers was dismissed in 2009, racial violence in the country has spiked — on the streets of Baltimore, Dallas and cities in between.  A phalanx of sycophantic media have done all they can to decouple the violence from the Black Lives Matter movement.  No amount of snark or spin can decouple the violent rhetoric chanted at Black Lives Matter rallies from the violence that has followed.  Americans watching on TV have ears.

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The Black Lives Matter movement lost whatever moral authority it had on the streets of Dallas this week.

But that won’t stop the smart set from keeping the movement going.  It reminds me of all the bloggers and columnists who spent so much time back in 2009 and 2010 ridiculing me, Megyn Kelly and any discussion of the New Black Panthers as a comic minstrel act.

That’s precisely what race-guilt addled Dave Weigel called it in the Atlantic: Megyn Kelly’s Minstrel Show.  “No one cares what the NBPP thinks about anything,” Weigel quipped.  “This is minstrelsy, with a fringe moron set up like a bowling pin for Hannity to knock down. And that’s the role the NBPP plays on Fox, frequently.”

Too bad Dave Weigel didn’t care a bit more about what the New Black Panthers thought about killing cops.  Instead of giving rhetorical cover to the gangsters, we should have had a healthy discussion about the existence of violent black racism.

But Weigel was giving no quarter back in 2010.  We were fools to devote air time to the New Black Panthers.  Megyn Kelly was making monsters out of clowns.  Weigel:

Watch her broadcasts and you become convinced that the New Black Panthers are a powerful group that hate white people and operate under the protection of Eric Holder’s DOJ.  …  They’ve been driven to fear and distrust of their DOJ by round-the-clock videos of one racist idiot brandishing a nightstick for a couple hours in 2008.

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Will they admit their mistake now that one “racist idiot brandishing a nightstick” has become a racist monster with a high-powered rifle and body armor? Based on what I know about this crowd, I doubt it.  They are better at doubling down than expressing contrition.

It wasn’t just Weigel.  The esteemed Clarence Page wrote at the Chicago Tribune that the New Black Panther “party’s membership could probably squeeze into a small SUV.”  Hopefull Clarence watches the video linked in this story.

That’s how they ridiculed the whole affair — make them crazy, make them small, make them harmless and make them clownish.

Bill Maher attacked anyone talking about the New Black Panthers:

Look, Republicans, I know this picture from Election Day 2008 scared you.  . . . And now it’s two years later, and that picture still scares you. . . . But, it’s time you understood something: every black person scares you unless they look like Urkel, talk like Colin Powell and wear Bill Cosby sweaters, you fill your adult diaper.

A lie, but that’s how these people roll when it comes to race.  Alex Pareene at Salon criticized the coverage of the New Black Panthers because they “were a couple of clowns.”  The racialist Adam Serwer at least increased their membership to a “bunch of clowns.”

All of this snark is because the existence of threatening violent black racism must never be discussed in sophisticated circles.

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When voter intimidation lawsuits are brought against an organization that produces “Training Day” videos describing how to ambush and kill cops, it is important to write it off as a couple of cranks.  When a New Black Panther member threatens to kill white babies, that certainly must be a single nut.  Surely uniformed black racists with weapons at polling sites couldn’t violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Anyone who would say otherwise can’t be taken seriously.

The truth is that everyone is fallen and imperfect, both black and white and every race in between.  The law is designed to protect everyone equally.

Pay close attention to whether people like Maher and Page continue to use their talents to excuse evil.  If they feel comfortable holding their course after Dallas and attacking anyone who would dare discuss the problem, it will say a great deal about where we are headed as as nation.

(Banner photo via You Tube and Breitbart Texas)

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