GOP vice chair: Conservatives on commission “had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president”

Politico: Thernstrom said commissioners had “fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration.” In a July 16 Politico article, Ben Smith reported:

A scholar whom President George W. Bush appointed as vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Abigail Thernstrom has a reputation as a tough conservative critic of affirmative action and politically correct positions on race.

But when it comes to the investigation that the Republican-dominated commission is now conducting into the Justice Department's handling of an alleged incident of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panther Party -- a controversy that has consumed conservative media in recent months -- Thernstrom has made a dramatic break from her usual allies.

“This doesn't have to do with the Black Panthers; this has to do with their fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said Thernstrom, who said members of the commission voiced their political aims “in the initial discussions” of the Panther case last year.

“My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president,” Thernstrom said in an interview with POLITICO.

AP, NY Times, and Wash. Post reported on phony New Black Panthers scandal

NY Times: " 'We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens,' Mr. Adams said." In a July 6 article, The New York Times reported, “A former Justice Department lawyer hired during the Bush administration alleged on Tuesday that the department scaled down a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year because his former colleagues do not want to protect white people's civil rights.” Citing Adams' testimony before the Commission on Civil Rights, the Times further reported, " 'We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens,' Mr. Adams said of the decision to reduce the scope of the New Black Panthers case, which he had helped to develop." The Times also reported that “the investigation has divided the commission” and that Thernstrom “wrote an article published Tuesday in National Review dismissing the New Black Panthers incident as 'small potatoes.' ”

Wash. Post: Adams testified that “some of his colleagues in the civil rights division were interested in protecting only minorities.” In a July 15 article, The Washington Post reported, “A 2008 voter-intimidation case has become a political controversy for the Obama administration as conservative lawyers, politicians and commentators raise concerns that the Department of Justice has failed to protect the civil rights of white voters.” The Post further reported that the “conflict intensified last week when former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams, who was hired during the Bush administration and helped develop the case, told the Commission on Civil Rights that he believed the case had been narrowed because some of his colleagues in the civil rights division were interested in protecting only minorities.” The Post also reported that Thernstrom “called it 'small potatoes.'”

AP: Adams is “accusing his ex-superiors of ignoring white voters' rights.” In a July 1 article, the Associated Press reported that “a former Justice Department lawyer is accusing his ex-superiors of ignoring white voters' rights and creating a systematic 'one-way' approach in which only minorities are protected. The claims by J. Christian Adams are the latest installment of a long-running dispute over Justice Department enforcement of the nation's civil rights laws.”

But they have not reported Thernstrom's statements

NY Times, Wash. Post, AP have not written about what Thernstrom told Politico. A search of the Nexis database shows that neither the Times nor the Post nor the AP has reported on Thernstrom's statements.