Justice Department was wrong to dismiss the New Black Panther case

Regarding the Oct. 4 editorial "Right call on the Black Panthers":

To suggest that the Obama Justice Department was "ethically obligated" to dismiss the case against the New Black Panthers is to ignore the evidence that this decision was based on political and racial considerations and not the rule of law.

Staff attorneys at the Justice Department wanted to pursue the case against the Black Panthers. Political appointees there did not.

This appears to contradict testimony by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, who told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under oath that no political leadership was involved in the decision to largely abandon the Black Panthers case. But documents given to Judicial Watch by the Justice Department suggest that the second- and third-ranking officials at the Justice Department -- and perhaps even Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. himself -- were involved in decisions about the case. And political appointees told Justice Department lawyer Christopher Coates, the career Justice attorney (and then head of Justice's Voting Rights Section) who brought the case, not to testify under oath about how and why it was dropped.

Why would Justice officials advocate for such secrecy? Because they knew exactly what Mr. Coates, a former ACLU lawyer and NAACP award winner, would say. There is "a deep-seated opposition to the equal enforcement of the Voting Rights Act against racial minorities and for the protection of whites who have been discriminated against" in the Obama Justice Department, Coates testified.

Given the evidence of a Justice coverup, the ethical thing to do would be for The Post to demand accountability from Mr. Holder.

Thomas Fitton, Washington

The writer is president of Judicial Watch, a conservative, nonpartisan group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.