As Hans notes below, Christopher Coates left the Department of Justice earlier this week.
Coates testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in defiance of a DOJ directive not to do so. His testimony was the most profound that I’ve heard in my tenure on the commission: DOJ discriminates on the basis of race in the enforcement of the nation’s voting-rights laws and refuses to enforce Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act — ensuring that only eligible voters cast ballots.
DOJ provided the commission no evidence controverting Coates’s testimony. And contrary to some media reports, even the internal investigation by DOJ’s own Office of Professional Responsibility confirmed several essential components of Coates’s testimony. In fact, OPR’s report found several current or former Civil Rights Division attorneys who acknowledged that the prevailing view in the division was that DOJ resources should be used only to enforce the laws to benefit minorities, not white voters.
Much of mainstream media yawned at the revelation that the department charged with protecting the civil rights of all Americans instead discriminates in favor of minorities. But then, in certain precincts, the view that civil-rights laws should be used only to benefit (preferred) minorities is unremarkable.
Chris Coates was an outstanding career DOJ attorney who had received a number of awards for bringing voting-rights cases on behalf of black voters. In classic whistleblower fashion he testified before the commission at great peril to his career. Unfortunately, in this instance his testimony was both politically incorrect and politically inconvenient. Were it not for his apostasy, he surely would have been lionized by a media whose outrage is contingent on viewpoint and regime.