Perez/DOJ Bewilder Fed Court in Susan Pine/Pro-Life Case — Crooked!
Harry Mihet was the lead attorney in Liberty Counsel’s successful defense of Susan Pine, a Florida pro-life woman who endured a two-year baseless and politically motivated prosecution by the DOJ, under the leadership of Thomas E. Perez.
In his testimony Wednesday, Harry told Congress that…
“The Department of Justice has apparently forgotten its name and that its purpose is to pursue justice and protect civil rights, not unconstitutional, groundless claims manufactured by abortion clinics to intimidate and silence pro-life Americans.”
Thomas Perez’s “Department of Injustice” is notorious![Editor: Perez is currently being considered as nominee for Barack Obama’s Secretary of Labor.]
Here is what happened in the 2010 confrontation…
Thomas Perez assembled a team of seven (7!) taxpayer-funded lawyers, flew many of them to Florida for a “stakeout” of Susan Pine’s constitutionally protected speech outside an abortion clinic, and much later filed a federal lawsuit against her, claiming that she had “obstructed” a vehicle from entering the clinic.
But their case had problems from the beginning…
The DOJ had no “victim” because no one ever complained of being obstructed. The DOJ and the abortion clinic “accidentally” failed to preserve the videotapes from the clinic’s security system, which would have shown that Ms. Pine broke no law. And the DOJ manufactured facts out of whole cloth, only to have them refuted by its own witnesses.
At the end of the hearing of the DOJ’s trumped-up complaint, federal Judge Kenneth L. Ryskamp concluded that…
“The evidence could not lead a rational jury to find that Ms. Pine’s conduct [i.e., having peaceful conversations with clinic visitors on a public sidewalk] constituted a physical obstruction in violation of any law .. The Court is at a loss as to why the Government chose to prosecute this particular case in the first place.”
Judge Ryskamp also said he suspected that, “this action was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and the [abortion clinic], which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities.” …
The court threw out the DOJ’s lawsuit, and the DOJ paid $120,000 in fees and costs for its frivolous conduct!
Harry Mihet rightfully asserts in his written testimony…
“When the very institution charged with protecting civil rights becomes complicit in violating them, all Americans suffer. Mr. Perez and those under his leadership have demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to follow the rule of law when it conflicts with their partisan ideology.”
http://www.lc.org/index.cfm?PID=14100&PRID=1307