*In 1999, a white cop in Tulia, TX arrested dozens of Black people on drug charges that were later discovered to be bogus. The crooked cop behind the arrests was given an award by the state’s then-Attorney General John Cornyn.
Today, Cornyn is a U.S. Senator on the Judiciary Committee, currently holding confirmation hearings for President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice nominee Vanita Gupta, the former NAACP lawyer who exposed the travesty of justice in Tulia and got the cases overturned.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow methodically laid out the through-line on her show Wednesday to explain why Sen. Cornyn is fighting so hard to block Gupta’s nomination, and why it has zero to do with her qualifications.
Maddow explained that all of the Black people railroaded by the racist cop were given full pardons by then-Gov. Rick Perry.
“I wonder, I just wonder if Sen. John Cornyn might be at all embarrassed about this and about the young lawyer who came to Texas and exposed this thing, this terrible and cartoonishly evil thing that he had helped along, that he had celebrated, that he had given an award to,” Maddow said. “It is now Sen. John Cornyn leading the charge against Venita Gupta to be the number three official at the Justice Department. Even because all the law enforcement operations endorsing her. The Judiciary Committee is due to vote tomorrow. Republicans led by John Cornyn have been demanding that she actually needs to come back and do her confirmation hearings over a second time. That’s not going to happen.”
Gupta, who oversaw the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Obama, is up for the position of associate attorney general at the DOJ. Cornyn called her
Below is Maddow’s segment. Ed Bradley’s 2002 “60 Minutes” segment on Tulia, TX, which includes an interview with the racist cop, can be watched above.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
