The Obama administration apparently has yet another burgeoning scandal to add to its already long list. Emails obtained by the Daily Caller reveal that there has been regular collaboration between Department of Justice staff and the left-wing advocacy group Media Matters for America. Dozens of communications that the Caller obtained via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demonstrate that DOJ Office of Public Affairs Director Tracy Schmaler was coordinating efforts with Media Matters to attack reporters who covered various DOJ scandals. “We received a massive amount of these communiques that indicate direct coordination between the Obama Justice Department…and Media Matters to subvert news stories,” Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson said Tuesday. “This proves coordination.”
The first attempt at such subversion concerns the New Black Panther voter intimidation case that was dropped by the DOJ, a move subsequently revealed as blatantly political. So much so that a judge awarded attorney fees to Judicial Watch because the DOJ had stonewalled the release of documents demonstrating that political appointees within the Department squelched the case, and that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez lied under oath when he denied it during a hearing conducted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
The dropping of that case led former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams to tender his resignation in protest of the DOJ’s “racially motivated” reasons for doing so. The DOJ was also heavily criticized by Hans A. von Spakovsky, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former Federal Election Commission commissioner, who also concluded that the “fix was in at the Justice Department in its internal investigation of the New Black Panther Party case.”
Emails sent in September and November 2010 show Schmaler working with Media Matters staffer Jeremy Holden, who obliged Schmaler with an article published Sept. 20, 2010 criticizing both men for what he called an attempt “to reignite the phony New Black Panther Party scandal.” Prior to his posting of that article, Holden received several emails from Schmaler detailing ways to attack the men. Holden reiterated his attack against Adams in a subsequent article November 18, 2010. Former DOJ attorney Christopher Coates, who, like Adams, testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that the dismissal of the Black Panther case was racially motivated, was also attacked by Holden. In response, Schmaler sent Holden an email titled “Great piece…”
The next scandal that needed squelching was the Fast and Furious gun-walking fiasco. The DOJ allowed guns to “walk” into the hands of Mexican drug cartel members, and Border Agent Brian Terry was killed as a direct result of that malfeasance. The subsequent investigation into who knew what and when remains ongoing, due to the DOJ’s refusal to hand over documents subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The standoff burgeoned into a full-blown confrontation, when President Obama invoked executive privilege to prevent the documents from being released, and Attorney General Eric Holder was subsequently held in contempt of Congress.