Today, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility issued a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, stating that in their handling of the voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panthers Party, senior career attorneys at DOJ “did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately.” The investigation also found “no evidence” that their decisions were improperly influenced by political considerations or by the race of the defendants.

This letter gives the lie to the theory promoted endlessly by Fox News that DOJ's decision to dismiss civil charges against some of the defendants in the case was the result of political malfeasance and racial politics. As former Democratic U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Michael Yaki has said, the investigation demonstrates that “there was nothing sinister or evidence of any racial bias” in the Obama DOJ's handling of the case.

But Fox has signaled that it won't take this new report lying down. A post on Fox Nation proclaims: “All Clear! DOJ Investigators Whitewash Black Panther Case.”

The post provides absolutely no evidence of this supposed “whitewash.” Other than the headline, the post simply reprints a few paragraphs from a TPMMuckraker article about the letter and directs people to TPMMuckraker for the full story.