Washington Examiner OpEd by former DOJ lawyers Christopher Coates and J. Christian Adams:

Senators of both parties should be reluctant to confirm nominee Thomas E. Perez as Labor secretary because he has provided inaccurate testimony under oath.

The explosive report by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz details the existence of an open and toxic hostility inside the DOJ toward bringing voting rights cases to protect white victims of discrimination. When Perez testified before the Civil Rights Commission in May 2010, he denied he had ever heard of any such hostility. His testimony was false.

We should know. We detailed this problem to Perez in his office the day before his testimony. We described the long and detailed history of hostility by many DOJ employees toward race-neutral enforcement of the voting rights laws if the victims of discrimination were white.

Yet when Perez was pressed by Civil Rights Commission member Todd Gaziano on whether he was aware of such rancid attitudes toward protecting white victims, he replied: “We don’t have people of that ilk, sir.” Perez knew that wasn’t true. The inspector general’s report documents people “of that ilk,” stacked from top to bottom at the Civil Rights Division, most still working there.