Special Report ignored Commission's GOP vice-chair's statement that the case is “small potatoes”

Special Report aired a Republican commissioner's remarks encouraging an investigation of DOJ's handling of the case. On the July 6 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier, correspondent Shannon Bream reported on GOP activist J. Christian Adams' accusations about the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division choosing not to pursue additional civil voter intimidation charges against members of the New Black Panther Party during a hearing of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Bream reported that commissioner Ashley Taylor had said that Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez had “vowed to investigate claims of selective enforcement if any evidence surfaced.” She then aired footage of Taylor stating, “tomorrow, we'll be sending a letter asking him to open that investigation that he promised.”

Special Report ignored Republican Commission vice-chair Abigail Thernstrom's statement: “Forget about the New Black Panther Party case; it is very small potatoes.” Bream did not report on the comments made the same day by the Republican vice-chair of the Commission on Civil Rights in which she urged conservatives to “forget about the New Black Panther Party case,” saying that the Panthers had engaged in a “one-off stunt.” In a National Review article, Thernstrom wrote:

Forget about the New Black Panther Party case; it is very small potatoes. Perhaps the Panthers should have been prosecuted under section 11 (b) of the Voting Rights Act for their actions of November 2008, but the legal standards that must be met to prove voter intimidation -- the charge -- are very high.

Additionally, during the Commission's April 23 hearing on the case, Thernstrom stated that she did “not think that this inquiry has served the interests of the Commission as being a bipartisan watchdog for important civil rights violations, and I do not believe it has served well the party to which I belong.”

Special Report neglected to acknowledge “former Justice Department lawyer” Adams' GOP activism

Bream identified Adams only as “former Justice Department attorney.” Introducing Bream's segment, host Bret Baier identified Adams only as a “former Justice Department lawyer,” while Bream identified Adams as a “former Justice Department attorney.”

Adams is a longtime conservative activist reportedly hired by Bush appointee who politicized the Justice Department. A December 2, 2009, article on the legal news website Main Justice reported that Adams “was hired in 2005 by then-Civil Rights Division political appointee Bradley Schlozman, according to a person familiar with the situation” and that “Schlozman was found in this joint investigation of the Justice Department's Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to have violated civil service rules by improperly taking political and ideological affiliations into account when making career attorney hires."

Adams reportedly volunteered with GOP group that “trains lawyers to fight on the front lines of often racially tinged battles over voting rights.” The December 2009 Main Justice article further reported:

Before coming to the Justice Department, Adams volunteered with the National Republican Lawyers Association, an offshoot of the Republican National Committee that trains lawyers to fight on the front lines of often racially tinged battles over voting rights.

In 2004, Adams served as a Bush campaign poll watcher in Florida, where he was critical of a black couple for not accepting a provisional ballot in early voting after officials said they had no record of the couple's change of address forms, according to Bloomberg News. Democratic poll watchers had advised voters not to accept provisional ballots because of the risk they could be discounted under Florida law, Bloomberg reported.

Adams has used extreme language to attack Obama in right-wing media. In an October 30, 2009, American Spectator article, Adams compared President Obama to appeasers who cause the carnage of World War II. In a June 28 Pajamas Media post, Adams accused the Obama administration of “profound hostility” toward “a race-neutral enforcement of civil rights laws.”

Fox's Megyn Kelly: A source “close to the case” said “Christian Adams is a conservative who has made willful misstatements in this interview.” After airing an interview with Adams on the June 30 edition of America Live, Kelly reported the Justice Department's reaction to Adams' allegations and noted, “Another source close to the case telling one of our producers that Christian Adams is a conservative who has made willful misstatements in this interview.”

Special Report repeated Adams' bogus claim that this was a “slam dunk case” of intimidation

Shannon Bream: Adams called this “a slam dunk case of voter intimidation.” Bream reported that in Adams' testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Adams had called the suit “a slam dunk case of voter intimidation against several members of the Black Panther party.” Bream failed to note that, reportedly, no citizen has alleged that the Panthers had intimidated them from voting.

Civil Rights Commissioner: "[N]o citizen has even alleged that he or she was intimidated from voting." In an April 23 hearing on the DOJ's decision in the case, Civil Rights Commissioner Arlan Melendez noted that “no citizen has even alleged that he or she was intimidated from voting,” which “was clear to the Justice Department last spring, which is why they took the course of action that they did.” From the April 23 Civil Rights Commission hearing:

MELENDEZ: My remarks are going to be brief because I think far too much of our time has been consumed on this seemingly unnecessary investigation. Citizens should be able to vote without intimidation, and it is our Commission's duty to investigate complaints from citizens that their voting rights have been infringed.

In this case, however, no citizen has even alleged that he or she was intimidated from voting at the Fairmount Avenue Polling Station in 2008. This absence of voter intimidation was clear to the Justice Department last spring, which is why they took the course of action that they did.

This absence of voter intimidation was clear to the members of this Commission as well, or at least it should've been. Our investigation has been going on now for the better part of a year. We have wasted a good deal of our staff's time, and the taxpayers' money.

Main Justice: "[N]o voters at all in the Philadelphia precinct have come forward to allege intimidation." A July 2 article on Main Justice reported that “no voters at all in the Philadelphia precinct have come forward to allege intimidation” adding, “The complaints have come from white Republican poll watchers, who have given no evidence they were registered to vote in the majority black precinct.

Special Report failed to note that Adams' allegations are based on hearsay, not firsthand evidence

Special Report aired Adams' testimony on specific incidents surrounding the case without noting he was not present at the pertinent meetings. In Bream's report on Adams' testimony before the Commission on Civil Rights, she aired footage from the testimony in which Adams suggested that the lead attorney, Chris Coates, ”was so outraged" about the cases' dismissal that he “threw the memo” explaining the decision at his supervisor. However, Bream ignored Adams' prior statements on Fox in which he admitted he was not present at the meeting where this alleged incident occurred.

Adams: “I don't know. I wasn't there.” During a June 30 interview with Fox News' Megyn Kelly, Adams claimed that Chris Coates, a DOJ attorney, “actually threw the memo at [attorney Steve] Rosenbaum and said, 'How dare you make these arguments without even knowing what's in the briefs?' ”When Kelly asked, “What was the response? I mean, that's extraordinary story,” Adams said, “I don't know. I wasn't there”:

KELLY: [W]hen you were arguing, when the career -- when the trial attorneys were trying to convince these two political attorneys to let the case go forward -- you'd already won, saying, “Don't reverse our victory,” essentially -- there was a meeting, and these lawyers would later testify -- the political lawyers would later come out and say that they reviewed all the evidence. The Department of Justice has said they looked at the all evidence and they made a decision based on that evidence: the case couldn't go forward. You say there is evidence that they did not review the facts of this case and even the briefs of this case.

ADAMS: Yeah. It's obviously false that they knew all the evidence. They -- Steve Rosenbaum hadn't even read the memos which detailed all of the facts and the law before he started arguing against the case. The mind was made up.

And it was so derelict and so corrupt that Chris Coates actually threw the memo at Rosenbaum and said, “How dare you make these arguments without even knowing what's in the briefs?”

KELLY: So your boss, the guy who had been a career DOJ lawyer, voting-rights lawyer, throws the memo, throws a brief at the head of this guy Steve Rosenbaum?

ADAMS: He very passionately believed in the merits of this case and very much opposed corruption of this sort, and he was angry.

KELLY: What was the response? I mean, that's an extraordinary story.

ADAMS: I don't know. I wasn't there.

KELLY: But this came to you from Coates.

ADAMS: Correct.

KELLY: And you have no doubt that it occurred?

ADAMS: There's no question about it, it occurred.

KELLY: So what -- do you know the explanation from Rosenbaum, from this other woman, Loretta King, as to why they hadn't bothered to read the briefs at the DOJ on this case and why it should go forward?

ADAMS: They will probably deny that they didn't read it, but you can't explain something like that.

Adams has admitted his allegations are based on hearsay. As Media Matters has documented, Adams has acknowledged that his many of his claims about the Justice Department's handling of the case are based not on first-hand knowledge, but on the claims of others.

This is only the latest example of Fox News' dishonest reporting on this case

As Media Matters has noted numerous times before, Fox News has repeatedly distorted and misstated the facts of the Black Panthers case in order to promote Adams' accusations against the Obama Justice Department