Justice Department restrains lawyers in Panther probe

The Justice Department has told the federal attorneys who filed a civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party for disrupting a Philadelphia polling place last year not to cooperate with an investigation of the incident by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The commission last week subpoenaed at least two Justice Department lawyers and sought documents from the department to explain why the complaint was dismissed just as a federal judge was about to punish the New Black Panther Party and three of its members for intimidating voters. Joseph H. Hunt, director of the Justice Department's Federal Programs Branch, ordered the lawyers' silence in a letter to the attorney for J. Christian Adams, the lead attorney for the department in the New Black Panther case. The letter said "well-established" and "lawful" Justice Department guidelines prohibited Mr. Adams' cooperation in the commission probe...read more