Via Daily Caller:
The Department of Justice under former President Barack Obama has been held up by critics of President Donald Trump’s White House as above reproach, untainted by the political bias some allege runs rampant in the current administration.
In light of this revisionist history, it is worth examining the numerous examples of political bias in the Obama Justice Department. Here are five examples:
Funneled Financial Crisis Settlement Money To Liberal Groups And Excluded Conservative Groups
Emails written by Obama DOJ officials, obtained by the House Judiciary Committee in October as part of an ongoing investigation, revealed the agency engaged in a systemic effort to funnel money garnered from settlements with big banks to liberal advocacy organizations.The agency effectively skirted Congress’s budgetary authority by requiring that major financial institutions donate to a group of affordable housing nonprofits and legal advocacy organizations as part of settlement agreements resulting from predatory mortgage lending practices. The investigation has thus far yielded evidence implicating the Obama DOJ in using mandatory donations to funnel roughly $1 billion in settlement money to activist groups, including The National Council of La Raza, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the National Urban League. The list of third-party organizations were unrelated to the legal settlements, except through general claims that they would use the funds to aid the low-income Americans most severely harmed by predatory lending practices.
Another internal email exchange reveals that DOJ officials made a concerted effort to prevent the allocation of settlement funds to a conservative legal group.
A senior Obama DOJ official confirmed the extensive coordination required to prevent conservative groups from benefiting from the financial settlements in his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. Officials reworded a mandatory donation provision with the explicit goal of “not allowing Citi to pick a statewide intermediary like the Pacific Legal Foundation [PLF],” according to the official, who explained, “does conservative property-rights free legal services.”
DOJ’s Community Relations Service Provided Security For Racial Protests
The Community Relations Service (CRS), a unit of DOJ, deployed to Sanford, Fla., in 2012 “to provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and rallies related to the fatal shooting” of Trayvon Martin at the hands of neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, according to DOJ documents obtained by Judicial Watch.The rally featured prominent racial provocateur Rev. Al Sharpton as a speaker. The unit “was in Florida as part of their mandated mission,” a CRS spokeswoman told The Daily Caller. The mission is to serve as a “‘peacemaker’ for community conflicts and tensions arising from differences of race, color, and national origin,” according to department’s website.