Emails show Justice working with Media Matters on stories that target critics

Fox News

Newly published emails show the top spokeswoman at the U.S. Justice Department regularly collaborating with the liberal advocacy group Media Matters on stories that slam the administration's critics.

The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and published by The Daily Caller, often show department public affairs chief Tracy Schmaler communicating with Media Matters bloggers. Sometimes, the emails were in response to inquiries. Other times, Schmaler was pitching ideas, according to the Caller.

In a January 2012 email chain, Schmaler sent a Media Matters writer lines from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa's comments at a recent hearing. She reportedly underlined passages where the California Republican tries to explain the difference between Operation Fast and Furious and other anti-gunrunning operations under former President George W. Bush.

Hours later, an article appeared on Media Matters' site titled "Rep. Issa Ties Himself in Fast and Furious Knots."

Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson, also a Fox News contributor, said the emails show "moment-to-moment coordination" between the department and Media Matters.

"We received a massive amount of these communiques that indicate direct coordination between the Obama Justice Department ... and Media Matters to subvert news stories," he said Tuesday. "This proves coordination."

Emails from late 2010 also reportedly showed Schmaler sending Media Matters information to help challenge claims that the department dealt lightly with New Black Panther members who allegedly intimidated voters in Philadelphia in 2008.

Another March 12 email showed Schmaler pointing out "false" statements made by Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips in a Fox News interview. Phillips called Operation Fast and Furious a "political operation" -- pushing a claim that the administration let guns walk across the Mexico border to build a case for gun control.

The Media Matters writer then wrote a blog slamming Phillips' "right-wing conspiracy theory," and also sent the text to Schmaler.

The Daily Caller reported that throughout the exchanges, Media Matters staffers were often sending to Schmaler the full text of what they wrote about the department's critics.

Nervousness about Charles Barron Prompts a Flood of National Money for Hakeem Jeffries

Capital New York
Reid Pillifant

Hakeem Jeffries and Charles Barron.

The fear that Charles Barron might actually win next week's primary for a Brooklyn-Queens congressional seat has triggered a flood of contributions from all across the country to his opponent, Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries.

Barron, a former Black Panther, has long been known in New York political circles for his racial rhetoric and his professed admiration for international-pariah dictators like Muammar Khadafy and Robert Mugabe, but particularly attention has been focused in the national media in the last couple of weeks on his anti-Israel rhetoric. Among other things, he has compared conditions in Gaza to those in Nazi concentration camps.

On Monday alone, Jeffries raised a combined $37,500 from donors in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Louisiana, Illinois, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Ohio and California. Most of the donations were individual contributions of $1,000; the World Alliance for Israel PAC gave $5,000.
That one-day total is more than Barron had raised for his entire campaign through June 6, not counting Barron's own contributions.

Jeffries has also collected from Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas in recent weeks, adding tens of thousands of dollars to the $375,000 he reported having on hand in early June, and giving the campaign an unexpected surplus to spend down the home stretch.

The increase in donations to Jeffries, who had already put together a broad coalition of institutional supporters, coincided with the endorsement of Barron by the retiring Representative Ed Towns on June 4 and subsequent increase in the seriousness with which the media began treating his prospects ahead of the June 26 primary.

Only a handful of donations from outside the area appear on Jeffries' pre-primary filing, which covered donations from April 1 to June 6.

Barron has been trying to shift the conversation away from his controversial comments and focus on his constituent work, but national Democrats and newspaper editorials have been sounding the alarm, warning of what a Barron candidacy might mean for the party and the Middle East.

The scenario is somewhat reminiscent of one from 2002, when supporters of Israel rallied to defeat Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney in a primary one observer called "a little Middle East proxy war."


McKinney's opponent out-raised her by nearly two-to-one and, with some crossover help from Republican voters in the state's open primary, McKinney lost by a wide margin. (After the race, McKinney's father attributed the loss to "J-E-W-S" who "bought everybody.)

Pro-Israel donors rallied again in 2006 when, after winning her seat back two years earlier, McKinney found herself in a surprisingly competitive primary against the current congressman, Hank Johnson, who won soundly in the run-off.

I asked Jeffries after an event in Bedford-Stuyvesant last night how he felt about his campaign becoming a national cause.

"We're going to remain focused on the issues that are relevant to the people in the communities like Bedford-Stuyvesant, like affordable housing, safe streets and a strong economy," he said.

There Is No New Black Panther Party: An Open Letter From the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation

Black Panther

In response from numerous requests from individual's seeking information on the "New Black Panthers," the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation issues this public statement to correct the distorted record being made in the media by a small band of African Americans calling themselves the New Black Panthers. As guardian of the true history of the Black Panther Party, the Foundation, which includes former leading members of the Party, denounces this group's exploitation of the Party's name and history. Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black community, this band would graft the Party's name upon itself, which we condemn.

Firstly, the people in the New Black Panthers were never members of the Black Panther Party and have no legitimate claim on the Party's name. On the contrary, they would steal the names and pretend to walk in the footsteps of the Party's true heroes, such as Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton, George Jackson and Jonathan Jackson, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, Fred Hampton, Mark Cark, and so many others who gave their very lives to the black liberation struggle under the Party's banner.

Secondly, they denigrate the Party's name by promoting concepts absolutely counter to the revolutionary principles on which the Party was founded. Their alleged media assault on the Ku Klux Klan serves to incite hatred rather than resolve it. The Party's fundamental principle, as best articulated by the great revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, was: "A true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love." The Black Panthers were never a group of angry young militants full of fury toward the "white establishment." The Party operated on love for black people, not hatred of white people.

Furthermore, this group claims it would "teach" the black community about armed self-defense. The arrogance of this claim is overwhelmed by its reactionary nature. Blacks, especially in the South, have been armed in self-defense for a very long time; indeed, the spiritual parent of the Party itself was the Louisiana-based Deacons for Defense. However, the Party understood that the gun was not necessarily revolutionary, for the police and all other oppressive forces had guns. It was the ideology behind the gun that determined its nature.