HOUSTON, TEXAS — Despite his constant criticism of his ex-employer, former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams said this weekend that he developed a “tight camaraderie” with employees in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division who were “not insane.”
It was when he spoke to those friends about his decision to resign from the Justice Department because of handling of an investigation into a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party that Adams said he was “reminded by [sic] a story of Mother Teresa.”
Speaking at the anti-voter fraud group True the Vote’s first national summit over the weekend, Adams said he gained “a lot of good friends” at DOJ, including Hans von Spakovsky who he said he “can’t say enough about.”
“When you work in the Justice Department in Voting and you’re not insane like we weren’t, you develop a tight camaraderie,” Adams told the crowd.
Adams resigned back in May 2010 because the Justice Department told him not to comply with a subpoena by the conservative-controlled U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which later issued a report criticizing the Justice Department’s handling of the civil voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party.
“And as I was leaving I thought well what was I going to do? I have to leave because I have to comply with this subpoena and I’m not going to help the administration cover up the Black Panther dismissal,” Adams said.
“And I talked to a lot of these friends and I was reminded by a story of Mother Teresa,” Adams said.
“And Mother Teresa would talk about how all these young folks would come to her in Calcutta and they would visit her and they wanted to say… they said to her ‘I want to help you, I want to help your mission here in Calcutta, can I join you, can I participate’… and she would turn them all away and say ‘No, go find your own Calcutta, go do it yourself, go where you need to go where your heart guides you to do what I’m doing on your own’,” Adams said.
“And I think that’s a message to everyone who traveled here this weekend, go find your own Calcutta,” Adams said.
“Obviously people are ready to help, there’s no question about that,” Adams said. “But in order to save or change this country, depending upon how you look at it, everyone needs to go find their own Calcutta because it’s waiting for them. I’ve seen the data, just uncork it and you can make the change where you live.”
Adams was hired by Bradley Schlozman, who was found by the Justice Department Inspector General’s office to have improperly politicized the hiring process in the Civil Rights Division during the Bush administration. Since he left the Justice Department, he’s been writing for Pajamas Media, Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government and other conservative media outlets in addition to providing legal advice to True the Vote and blogging at his own website.
Ryan J. Reilly
Ryan J. Reilly is a D.C.-based reporter for TPM. Prior to joining TPM, he worked for a news website covering the Justice Department and was a researcher for Bloomberg News. His email address is ryan(at)talkingpointsmemo.com.
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