Biden DOJ Pick Struggles to Defend Record on Black Panther Prosecutions
During confirmation hearing, Republicans pushed Kristen Clarke on her history of opposing civil rights cases against black defendants Kristen Clarke / Getty Images Kevin Daley • April 14, 2021 6:30 pm
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Justice Department nominee Kristen Clarke struggled to explain her criticisms of a civil rights case lodged against members of the New Black Panther Party during her confirmation hearing Wednesday.
Clarke tried to duck questions about her opposition to prosecuting two Panthers for civil rights violations in the 2008 election while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Republican lawmakers say the Black Panther case is a troubling indicator of her approach to enforcing civil rights laws.
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The Senate Judiciary Committee, Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) presiding, heard from two administration nominees for critical positions in the Department of Justice. Todd Kim was nominated to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources. But he wasn’t the main event. That was Kristen Clarke, whom the administration wants to be the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Done correctly, this position is where all the hottest issues of the day come together, from police violence to voting rights to systemic racism.
Over the past two decades, it’s been one of the flashpoints of every confirmation process in a new administration. It was the job to which President Bill Clinton tried to appoint Lani Guinier only to chicken out when the
California District Attorneys Association head Vern Pierson says George Gascon left group months before announced resignation
This is a rush transcript from Tucker Carlson Tonight, February 18, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
MARK STEYN, GUEST HOST: Good evening and welcome to TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. I m Mark Steyn, in for Tucker.
Throughout the Western world this past year, governments of all kinds bungled the Chinese coronavirus. They did what no society has tried to do before: quarantine and lockdown millions upon millions of perfectly healthy people, destroying their livelihoods, and at least for the third of the population suffering from clinical depression, destroying their mental health into the bargain.
Race warrior Kristen Clarke should not head DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Print this article
President Biden’s nomination of respected federal judge Merrick Garland as attorney general should not excuse his nomination of leftist Kristen Clarke to head the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, has drawn fire from Jewish groups and from Fox News personality Tucker Carlson for things she did and said a quarter of a century ago while a student at Harvard University, including a letter in which she argued that extra melanin in the brains of black people give them “superior physical and mental abilities” to those of whites, whose “pineal glands are often calcification or non-functioning.”