The People Vs. Barack Obama

by Ben Shapiro

  And, of course, President Obama spoke out again. Originally, he’d ignored the facts and used his government to target Zimmerman. Now he ignored the facts again, and suggested—again, without any evidence—that Zimmerman was a vicious racist involved in racial profiling, and that racism plagued America at the deepest levels. After paying lip service to the system, he declared the verdict unfair: “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away. There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me—at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.”

  This supposedly made the attempted railroading of Zimmerman just fine, according to Obama, since members of the black community had hurt feelings about phantom institutional racism. Instead of using his Justice Department to prosecute actual acts of racial profiling, Obama sent them on a goose chase to Sanford, Florida. And that, according to Obama, was justified: “And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws—everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.”

  Obama sadly admitted that he had no more power to do anything about Zimmerman: “I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code. And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal level.”

  Obama concluded by once again justifying the racial pyre he had helped to prepare, and then lit via the power of his office: “if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario . . . from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.” Obama was right. So was Mark O’Mara. If a white male teen had been involved, Obama never would have been involved—and Zimmerman likely never would have been arrested or prosecuted. It took Obama’s race-baiting, and the race-baiting of his official underlings, to put Zimmerman on trial before the world, without a shred of supporting evidence.9

  THE CHARGES

  The judiciary has defined federal criminal intimidation broadly. According to the Department of Justice, there is a debate among the courts about the scope of the relevant statute. Some courts have said that prosecution may be appropriate under 18 U.S. Code § 1503 anytime someone interferes “with the fair administration of justice if that conduct was undertaken with a corrupt motive.” The Supreme Court seems to back this approach. The only true limitation under the clause is that all prohibited action must take place under the shadow of an upcoming judicial proceeding.

  This clause is a catch-all, and includes crimes including suborning perjury, falsely testifying, attempting to influence a witness, altering documents, and the like.10 The Obama administration, as we’ll see, is far too fond of manipulating the justice system on behalf of its friends and against its enemies to avoid breaking the law.

  THE RACIAL PROTECTION RACKET

  The Zimmerman case wasn’t the first time or the last time the Obama administration had perverted the justice system to target its enemies and help its friends, especially on issues of race. One particular group has received special treatment from the Obama administration: the New Black Panther Party. Obama’s warm relationship with the NBP got started before his election, when two solid young members of law-abiding society stood outside a polling place in Philadelphia wearing military clothing and threateningly playing with their nightsticks. The Justice Department immediately leapt into action . . . to stop action. The whole thing was caught on tape. That merited no federal prosecution. But George Zimmerman—that white-Hispanic racist!—merited the department’s full-scale attention.

  J. Christian Adams, a Justice Department lawyer, later wrote, “The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law of my Justice Department career.” Nevertheless, he wrote, “Before a final judgment could be entered in May 2009, our superiors ordered us to dismiss the case. . . . Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers.” Thomas Perez, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, somehow came to the odd conclusion that the “facts and law” didn’t support prosecution. Loretta King, Obama’s head of the Civil Rights Division, “did not even read the internal Justice Department memorandums supporting the case and investigation,” Adams reported. “Incredibly, after the case was dismissed, instructions were given that no more cases against racial minorities like the Black Panther case would be brought by the Voting Section.”

  New Black Panther Party activity wasn’t restricted to Philadelphia. “We had indications that polling-place thugs were deployed elsewhere, not only in November 2008, but also during the Democratic primaries, where they targeted white Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters,” Adams said. “Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases. Some of my co-workers argued that the law should not be used against black wrongdoers because of the long history of slavery and segregation. Less charitable individuals called it ‘payback time.’ ” Adams ended up leaving the department in protest over its behavior.11

  While leftists called Adams a liar, NBPP head Malik Shabazz freely admitted why the group hadn’t been prosecuted: the Obama administration “owed us” some “favors” because they helped “deliver” Obama the presidency.12 Shabazz also pointed out, “Justice Department leadership changed into the hands of a black man by the name of Eric Holder.” That’s no surprise. Holder reportedly carries a quote in his wallet: “Blackness is another issue entirely apart from class in America. No matter how affluent, educated and mobile [a black person] becomes, his race defines him more particularly than anything else. Black people have a common cause that requires attending to, and this cause does not allow for the rigid class separation that is the luxury of American whites.” Holder once explained that quote thusly: “It really says that . . . I am not the tall U.S. attorney, I am not the thin United States attorney. I am the black United States attorney. And he was saying that no matter how successful you are, there’s a common cause that bonds the black United States attorney with the black criminal or the black doctor with the black homeless person.”13

  The NBP didn’t stop its lawbreaking. On March 24, before George Zimmerman’s arrest, the New Black Panthers led a protest in Sanford, where member Mikhail Muhammad placed a ten-thousand-dollar bounty on Zimmerman. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Muhammad stated. He added, “Goddamnit, he should be fearful for his life. You can’t keep killing black children,
killing our children all over America. And we’re supposed to take it easy? Supposed to play nice about it?” What happened? Nothing. Brother James J. Muhammad, national director of education for the Ordinary People Society New Black Panther Party, said, “We were never contacted by the Justice Department. We were never contacted to calm down.”14

  It wasn’t enough for the Obama DOJ to drop all action against the New Black Panthers. President Obama got personally involved in one case in order to put pressure on a police department that had the temerity to arrest one of his friends. On June 16, 2009, Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University arrived home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and began to break into his home after his lock jammed. A neighbor called the police. She, of course, was later labeled a racist despite describing Gates and a companion this way: “One looked kind of Hispanic, but I’m not really sure. And the other one entered and I didn’t see what he looked like at all.”

  When the police arrived, Gates was in his home; they asked for identification. He refused to provide it, and was booked for disorderly conduct by Sergeant Joseph Crowley for “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior.” A black officer was present at the arrest, and later said he agreed with Crowley’s actions. Gates then threatened the officer, and told him he had “no idea who he was messing with.”15

  That much, at least, was true.

  Four days later, after the police dropped the charges, one of Gates’s high-placed friends, President Obama, was asked about the incident. “I might be a little biased here,” he said, because he was friends with “Skip Gates.” He then admitted, “I don’t know all the facts.” But that didn’t stop him from trying to push the notion that the Cambridge Police Department was racist: “Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.” He then said that the feds would work with police departments to target racism.16 Later, Obama would call for a “beer summit” between Crowley and Gates. Gates would hand the officer a copy of his memoir, Colored People, then praise Obama as “very wise, very sage, very Solomonic.”17 How nice. President Obama has never injected himself without significant public pressure into a local criminal justice matter involving either a black perpetrator or a white victim (see Oklahoma murder victim Christopher Lane of Australia, for example).

  “THE PRESIDENT WANTS ME TO TELL YOU IT’S TIME TO MOVE ON”

  On June 12, 2009, President Barack Obama fired AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Walpin, who had been appointed by the Bush administration in 2007, had the temerity to step on the toes of one of Obama’s close friends and political allies, former Phoenix Suns basketball star Kevin Johnson. But according to Obama, Walpin was fired for his incompetence. “[I]t is vital,” Obama wrote, “that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this inspector general.”

  There was a reason Walpin lost Obama’s confidence. And it had nothing to do with some supposed inability to write a brief.

  AmeriCorps is a federally subsidized volunteer program. In April 2008, Walpin took charge of an investigation into allegations that St. HOPE, a California nonprofit headed by Johnson, had received a grant of $850,000. That grant was slotted for tutoring students, gutting and fixing buildings, and theater and art. Instead, according to Walpin’s report, St. HOPE participated in “numerous potential criminal and grant violations, including diversion of federal grant funds, misuse of AmeriCorps members and false claims made against a taxpayer-supported Federal agency. The report found that AmeriCorps staff had been used to recruit for St. HOPE, for political activities connected to the Sacramento Board of Education election, and that AmeriCorps members even drove Johnson to personal appointments, washed his car, and did errands on his behalf.” Johnson said Walpin was politically motivated, and suggested that St. HOPE had engaged in a few “administrative errors.”18

  Nonetheless, based on his findings, Walpin insisted that Johnson be suspended from involvement with AmeriCorps; his recommendation was accepted. He also sent a referral to the U.S. attorney of the Eastern District of California for possible prosecution. The U.S. attorney’s office, led by Lawrence Brown, decided not to prosecute.

  Then Johnson was elected mayor of Sacramento. And Obama was elected president.

  The game began. Thanks to Johnson’s suspension from AmeriCorps, a city attorney said that Sacramento could be cut off from federal stimulus funds. So Johnson and others pressured the inspector general’s office to put the issue to bed and lift the suspension. Walpin refused, saying that Johnson hadn’t even bothered to explain the AmeriCorps activities. Brown then stopped working with Walpin altogether, and instead decided to go around Walpin to talk with AmeriCorps board chair Alan Solomont, a major Obama donor. By this point, Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff had joined AmeriCorps, too. Brown actually forced Johnson to hand over $72,836.50 in redress, and forced St. HOPE to pay back nearly $424,000. Then he handed Johnson a clean bill of health, prompting Walpin to complain that Brown had helped Johnson for political gain: “The suspension was lifted because, as one Corporation official put it, the Corporation could not ‘stand in the way of Sacramento’—thereby effectively stating that, while Respondent Johnson was not sufficiently responsible to receive further Federal funds in his management position as a grantee, he suddenly became sufficiently responsible when elected Mayor of a city receiving substantially more federal funds.” Walpin said the settlement sent the signal that acceptance of a grantee or its principal as ‘responsible’ can be purchased in a monetary settlement, overriding all evidence of wrongdoing previously found to warrant a suspension, without the presentation of any contradicting evidence.”19

  Walpin, upset, wrote a report for Congress and handed it over in April 2009. Less than two months later, Norman Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, called up Walpin, Walpin later explained. “Mr. Walpin,” Eisen reportedly said, “the president wants me to tell you that he really appreciates your service, but it’s time to move on. You can either resign, or I’ll tell you that we’ll have to terminate you.” Eisen gave him one hour to consider, then called back forty-five minutes later demanding a response.20

  Eisen said that it was “pure coincidence” that the resignation request came during the St. HOPE uproar. But that wasn’t true. Thanks to a bill co-sponsored by Senator Barack Obama, President Obama had to explain his rationale for dumping Walpin. White House counsel Gregory Craig tried to use a complaint by Brown about Walpin as an excuse, but that excuse didn’t hold water. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, “the evidence suggests that [Obama’s] White House fired a public official who refused to roll over to protect a Presidential crony.”21

  Later, an investigation by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) would find that Walpin had actually uncovered allegations of more than financial impropriety. According to their report, Johnson had allegedly engaged in sexual misconduct toward St. HOPE students. “Mr. Johnson’s attorney, Kevin Kiestand, approached at least one of the students describing himself only as ‘a friend of Johnson’s,’ and ‘basically asked me to keep quiet,’ ” the report stated. “[A]bout one week later, Kevin Johnson offered her $1,000 a month until the end of the program, which she refused to accept. Moreover, the OIG uncovered evidence of two other female St. HOPE students reporting Johnson for inappropriate sexual conduct towards them. These are not the first such allegations. Johnson was also accused of fondling a young woman in the mid 1990’s, but no charges were ever filed.” Grassley and
Issa pointed out that the Justice Department did little or nothing to investigate the allegations, and that there was no evidence that the White House had, either. One of the St. HOPE teachers, who quit the school in anger over the cover-up of Johnson’s activities, reported that a student had said Johnson “started massaging her shoulders and then reached over and touched her breasts.” The teacher said that “St. HOPE sought to intimidate the student through an illegal interrogation and even had the audacity to ask me to change my story.”22

  “PROSECUTED, STRIPPED OF THEIR POSITIONS, COURT-MARTIALED, FIRED, DISHONORABLY DISCHARGED”

  The Obama administration had no comment about the allegations of sexual impropriety from their favorite Sacramento mayor. The same held true for their ally in San Diego: when longtime Democratic congressman and San Diego mayor Bob Filner came under fire for allegedly sexually harassing dozens of women during his time in the mayoral office, Obama remained silent.

  But when a report broke in May 2013 suggesting that sexual assaults in the military had skyrocketed by more than one-third since 2010, Obama just had to sound off. “When you engage in this kind of behavior that’s not patriotic—it’s a crime. And we have to do everything we can to root this out,” Obama said in South Korea. He said he wanted alleged victims to “hear directly from their commander in chief that I’ve got their backs. I will support them. And we’re not going to tolerate this stuff and there will be accountability. If people have engaged in this behavior, they should be prosecuted.” He concluded, “I don’t want just more speeches or awareness programs or training but, ultimately, folks look the other way. If we find out somebody is engaging in this stuff, they’ve got to be held accountable—prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Period. It’s not acceptable.”23