Kristen Clarke: No ordinary racialist radical

I want to give Christian Adams Power Line’s last word on Kristen Clarke’s fitness to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Christian, after all, has had the misfortune of dealing with Clarke (I have not). And Christian’s assessment of Clarke encompasses the issue of voting — something I did not discuss in my many posts about her.

Here is some of what Christian has to say about Clarke:

Clarke is no ordinary racialist radical. . .She brings a reputation for being racially greedy. I have some personal experience with her on this point.

In 2007, I was working on what would become the Voting Rights Act case of United States v. Georgetown School Board. I was one of the lawyers who spent many days in South Carolina investigating violations of the Voting Rights Act. Georgetown had a voting-age black population of 34 percent but the at-large elections for school board resulted in no blacks ever being elected to the nine at-large seats. While there is no right to proportional representation, in theory, blacks could conceivably have won three of nine seats.

Regardless, they had none, and in a school district where the students were almost majority black, this created a system that stoked discontent and lack of responsiveness. . . .

The plan adopted in a DOJ settlement agreement created three majority-black districts out of seven (two seats remained elected at large) where it was likely a black preferred candidate would be elected. . . .

The DOJ team got wind that Clarke—representing the NAACP—was shadowing the DOJ lawyer interviews in the field with local African-American stakeholders, disrupting the progress the DOJ was making and urging locals to hold out for four or more black seats. Four seats out of seven (or nine) would have been well in excess of the general proportion of the black population. Clarke wanted more black seats than the law would allow and was willing to disrupt a settlement that created three black seats where none had existed before.

Christian expects more of the same from Clarke, now that she has the power of the U.S. government behind her:

Sometime, soon, the Justice Department Voting Section will be on the prowl looking for counties or school districts to sue. You might be a lawyer representing them (call me). In the past, even under Democrat leadership, the DOJ has largely been fair and sought only minority districts that could be supported by the law. Expect Clarke to jettison compliance with the law, because she takes it all personally, and it is all about skin color.

And don’t expect Attorney General Merrick Garland, faux moderate and figurehead (probably), to stand in Clarke’s way.

Garland has personally vouched for Clarke as “a person of integrity.” But Christian points out:

Garland hasn’t spent much time around her. Lawyers at the Voting Section who worked with her characterize her as a brutish and uncouth racial activist. She seethed racial animosity toward whites (who were not liberals) and Southerners.

In the good news department, Christian reports that Clarke “is viewed as ‘no Tom Perez or Vanita Gupta’ in the lawyering department.” He adds, however, that “she’ll have hundreds of brighter lawyers who work in the Civil Rights Division” behind her. Plus Gupta, herself.

Christian also suggests that Clarke has an anger management/violence problem:

The FBI made a serious mistake when it failed to interview her former husband prior to her confirmation. The police came to Clarke’s house no fewer than six times for domestic abuse. Had they done so, the Senate would have learned who made those 911 calls. (Don’t look for that story at Google because they are hiding it. Here’s a link.)

There’s plenty more in Christian’s article. I’ll conclude, as he does, with this rather ominous statement:

Clarke also fought against DOJ deploying assistant United States Attorneys at the polls in the 2008 election, a bipartisan practice that occurred under both Clinton and Bush. This was designed to document problems, deter fraud, and ensure that voting rights were protected.

Clarke’s opposition to federal lawyers observing an election should serve as a warning that this thoroughly modern woman wants nothing to do with ensuring the integrity of our elections. She has other priorities, and it isn’t the content of your character.

Had the Senate carefully scrutinized Clarke’s character, it would have rejected her on that basis alone.

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