Marathon Pundit: Thomas Perez: Big Labor's pick for Labor Secretary

Monday, May 20, 2013

Thomas Perez: Big Labor's pick for Labor Secretary

I strongly suspect that Big Labor has muted their opposition to Obama crony Penny Pritzker as Commerce Secretary in exchange for putting radical lawyer Thomas Perez in charge of the Labor Department.

Here is more on Perez from the Wall Street Journal--paid subscription required.

Labor Secretary nominee Thomas Perez made it through a Senate committee on an embarrassingly narrow 12-10 vote Thursday, with no Republican support. Democrats want to hold a Senate floor vote as soon as possible, and no wonder. The Justice Department's civil-rights chief's flexible interpretation of the law and disingenuous testimony echoes other abuses of power currently unfolding in Washington.

As these columns have explained, Mr. Perez convinced the City of St. Paul, Minnesota last year to withdraw an antidiscrimination case from the Supreme Court in exchange for Justice's agreement not to join two False Claims Act cases against the city. In doing so, Mr. Perez undermined civil servants who wanted to pursue the cases, abandoned whistleblower Fredrick Newell who was trying to improve the lot of Minnesota's poor, and forfeited as much as $200 million in potential damages.

Mr. Perez and Attorney General Eric Holder are proud of all this, which is problematic enough given that Mr. Perez is up for a cabinet position with enormous power. But he's further undermined his nomination by giving statements under oath that are contradicted by other testimony and documents. Last week, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley explained in detail the "extremely troubling" facts in a Senate speech, not that the media noticed.

Mr. Grassley accurately said that Mr. Perez "took steps to cover up the fact that he had bartered away the False Claims Act cases" by ensuring there was no written record of the deal. When asked about a request he made to the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota to exclude mention of the quid pro quo, Mr. Perez told investigators he merely wanted "closure."