Obama, Holder, Sharpton Misrepresent Facts in Trayvon Martin Case; Seek Federal Charges

The acquittal by a six-member Florida jury on July 13 in the trial of George Zimmerman for second-degree murder, with an option to convict for manslaughter, at least for rational people, produced relief and apprehension – relief because Zimmerman wouldn’t be headed to state prison; apprehension because the verdict likely would be a prelude to a federal probe. The latter is now underway. Attorney General Eric Holder, with the tacit approval of President Obama, has launched a campaign to delegitimize and overturn the verdict on the belief that Zimmerman, a mixed-race Hispanic Neighborhood Watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., wantonly shot a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, to death, and with racial intent. Any Justice Department action on this score would jeopardize rule of law and public safety. So it’s only fitting that this campaign got a boost this past weekend from demonstrations across the U.S. organized by Al Sharpton, a dedicated and destructive racial demagogue. 

National Legal and Policy Center described this case in detail in early April 2012. The evidence, even then, overwhelmingly supported the view that George Zimmerman, far from being a glory-hunting vigilante motivated by “racism,” was the victim of a brutal and unprovoked beating by the 17-year-old Martin. Testimony during the trial proved to the satisfaction of a jury, a few members of whom in fact originally had been skeptical, that Zimmerman used his pistol to save his own life, not to callously take someone else’s. Photos indicating trauma to Zimmerman’s face and head were merely part of the body of evidence that state prosecutors chose to ignore or downplay. It is difficult to see how a federal prosecution would be justified.

President Obama thinks otherwise. He had been maintaining a low profile since his “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” statement back in March 2012. But following the verdict, he let slip his disapproval. “We are a nation of laws, and a jury has spoken,” he announced in a brief, scripted, tight-lipped televised statement. The president’s use of the phrase “a jury,” as opposed to “the jury,” was telling. In a clever lawyerly way, he was implying this particular jury was less than legitimate; another jury, presumably more enlightened, would have reached the opposite conclusion. The hint: “We’ll get ‘em next time.” He followed this statement with a much more provocative and personal one on Friday. Trayvon Martin, he said, “could have been me, 35 years ago.” Amplifying the sentiment, he stated: “There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.” The president apparently sees fear of crime as “racism.” At the very least, Obama, trained as a lawyer, should know that a head of state who injects himself into a case like this could make a fair trial for Zimmerman almost impossible.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder notwithstanding is heading a Justice Department treasure hunt for evidence. Like his boss, he’s disingenuously playing the role of healer/unifier. In a speech last Monday, July 15, before a national black sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, he called Martin’s killing “a tragic, unnecessary shooting death.” He added: “We are determined to meet division and confusion with understanding and compassion – and also with truth. We will never stop working to ensure that in every case, in every circumstance and in every community, justice must be done.” The Attorney General apparently hasn’t had a problem with the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service sponsoring a series of rallies in Florida during which George Zimmerman was roundly denounced. Holder had been plenary speaker at the 2012 annual convention of Reverend Al Sharpton’s New York-based nonprofit group, National Action Network (NAN), an event held that April in Washington, D.C. During the event, Trayvon Martin’s parents appeared on stage with Sharpton.

As for Sharpton, a full-time MSNBC anchorman for the past two years, he seems as eager to make the news as he is to report it. Having already called the Florida verdict “an atrocity,” he vowed last Tuesday in Washington that he would lead a “Justice for Trayvon” day in 100 cities on Saturday to demand, for starters, federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman. Sharpton, a frequent visitor to the Obama White House, remarked: “People all over the country will gather to show that we are not having a two- or three-day anger fit. This is a social movement for justice.” But the protests produced nothing resembling hundreds of thousands, much less millions, of people. In Chicago, the home turf of featured speaker and “civil rights” hustler Jesse Jackson, about 6,000 showed up. In New York, several thousand attended a rally in Harlem outside NAN headquarters, an event that featured not only Sharpton, but also reigning hip-hop/r&b power couple Jay Z and Beyonce. Yet in most cities, the rallies attracted only a few hundred persons. And the attendees were overwhelmingly black, undercutting the notion that the “Justice for Trayvon” movement is a multiracial “rainbow.”

Jesse Jackson hadn’t been missing in action even before the Chicago protest. Several days before, he called for an investigation into the verdict by the UN Human Rights Council, a rotating body of 47 nation-states whose current membership include such human rights stalwarts as Angola, Congo and Kazakhstan. Jackson, founder-president of the nonprofit Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, also had issued a statement calling for “a national investigation of the racial context that led to Trayvon Martin’s slaying.” Let us translate: White America has blood on its hands and needs to engage in deep soul-searching as part of a “national conversation” on race.

Moral exhibitionism, however, isn’t the same thing as sound evidence. Any effort to put Zimmerman behind bars will face enormous obstacles. Indeed, it is hard to see how federal prosecutors would be any more effective than Florida prosecutors, whose case was effectively nonexistent. Not only would such a case be time-consuming and expensive, the very fact of its existence would raise the expectation of a conviction and thus the likelihood of mass rioting in the event of another acquittal. Indeed, in the immediate wake of the state verdict, rioting did occur. In Los Angeles, black rioters blocked traffic on Crenshaw Boulevard, at times jumping on vehicles. Part of the mob also invaded a local Walmart store, knocking down displays until security guards chased them out. Were it not for a rapid police response, things could have gotten as out of hand as they did in South-Central Los Angeles in 1992 in the aftermath of the jury acquittal of four police officers accused of beating an out-of-control motorist, Rodney King. Up the coast in Oakland, black hoodlums smashed police cars and broke storefront windows. Protests in Atlanta, Birmingham, Houston, Minneapolis, New York City and Washington, D.C., at least, were relatively peaceful.

The mass outrage was the culmination of a choreographed attempt to transform Trayvon Martin from an attempted murderer into a murder victim. Beginning in March 2012, only several days after the shooting, a nationwide groundswell of public sentiment had materialized to demand the prosecution of George Zimmerman for the February shooting death of Trayvon Martin. At the time, Martin was visiting his father in Sanford, Fla., not far from Orlando. Zimmerman, 28, was a patrol captain in a neighborhood crime prevention program. Local residents had formed the patrol following a recent sharp upswing in burglaries and other crimes. In fact, from January 1, 2011 through February 26, 2012 – the night of the shooting – police had been called to the 263-unit townhome complex where Martin visited, and where Zimmerman lived, The Retreat at Twin Lakes, more than 400 times. George Zimmerman perceived his neighborhood to have a crime problem because there was a crime problem. And far from being a “lone wolf,” Zimmerman actually was well-liked in his community. Blacks as well as whites trusted him. And his Neighborhood Watch council worked with, not against, local police.

He would face a crime problem directly on February 26, 2012. It was just after 7 PM. Zimmerman, driving in his truck to a neighborhood convenience store, encountered a male teenaged pedestrian who looked suspicious. His name was Trayvon Martin. And he was on a visit from Miami-Dade County. He and his father, Tracy Martin, had come up to Sanford to stay for a while with the father’s girlfriend, a resident of The Retreat at Twin Lakes. Far from being a “child,” as supporters of Trayvon Martin to this day insist on describing him (often displaying an absurdly dated photo), Martin was at least six feet tall, a good four inches taller than Zimmerman. He was in Sanford because he had been suspended, and not for the first time, from his high school in Miami Gardens. He also was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, or “hoodie.” It is common knowledge that criminals often wear this article of clothing so as to conceal their identity during a crime. As this was central Florida, it certainly wasn’t “cold weather” that induced Martin to don this apparel.
Source: http://nlpc.org/stories/2013/07/24/obama-holder-sharpton-misrepresent-facts-trayvon-martin-case-seek-federal-charges