If Violence Follows the Zimmerman Verdict, is the Obama Administration to Blame?

Today the defense presents its closing arguments in the trial of George Zimmerman. Prosecution rested after Bernie De La Rionda’s incoherent summation on Thursday, in which the state presented a number of theories regarding what happened between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin on the night of February 26, 2012, but stayed away from presenting much of a fact-based case.

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The fact is, the prosecution never had much of a case, certainly not for second degree murder. It acknowledged that it knew as much when it presented, at the last possible minute, the possibility of charging Zimmerman with third degree murder based on child abuse. Martin was about 7 inches taller than Zimmerman, and was far more athletic. The notion that child abuse played any role in events that resulted in Martin’s death flies in the face of reason. Judge Debra Nelson sensibly tossed that charge out, while allowing the jury to consider manslaughter along with murder-2.

George Zimmerman should never have been put on trial. The Sanford Police Department got it right when they took him in after the killing, examined the evidence, and found no grounds to charge him with anything. Former Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee told CNN that he faced enormous pressure from outside Sanford, indeed outside Florida, to bring charges against Zimmerman. That pressure had been building since the Martin family understandably sought to make their son’s death a public controversy, and built to a full blown national controversy when NBC deviously edited audio of Zimmerman’s 9-11 call to push a racial motive into the story that has no support in the actual facts of the case. When the race hustling reverends, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, became involved the fix for charges was in. But neither of them is the president, and they only wield the power of the microphone along with the threat to unleash violence if they don’t get their way.

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We learned this week that some of the pressure to press charges against Zimmerman came directly from Washington. The US Department of Justice intervened behind the scenes, dispatching an obscure division called the Community Relations Service to help organize the anti-Zimmerman protests. PJ Media’s J. Christian Adams had reported on the DOJ’s role two weeks before Judicial Watch released its documentary evidence this week. DOJ’s murky role points to the Obama administration’s desire to push the controversy. President Barack Obama would decline to comment on the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell in Pennsylvania, the black abortionist who was eventually convicted of infanticide. But Obama went out of his way to publicly comment on the Martin killing, declaring that if he had a son, “he would look like Trayvon.” Obama chose to comment on the case at a time when his poll numbers were flagging and a presidential election was looming just a few months away.

The president’s irresponsible comments came at a time when the media still played on George Zimmerman’s identity, either not identifying him racially at all or ascribing him to a newly made-up category: “white Hispanic.” The media’s antics allowed an incorrect image of Zimmerman to solidify, that of an older white male rather than the 28-year-old mixed man he is in reality. Obama’s comments also came at a time when he needed to shore up his base vote to ensure his re-election. Obama’s comments took the false racial narrative that the media and the hustlers had been constructing and planted it firmly on the White House lawn.

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And now we know, behind the scenes, the Eric Holder Justice Department was working hand in glove with the protesters to apply the pressure that eventually forced Chief Lee from office and brought the charges to bear against Zimmerman.

As the trial has wound toward its conclusion, threats of violence have exploded online. I wish I could share Bob Owens’ optimism that there will be no violence regardless of the verdict, but the sad fact is that we have riots over sports championships in this country now. When we have a government working behind the scenes to exert undue pressure on local officials to placate the Al Sharptons of the world, we have a government dangerously taking sides with a man who has shown before that he doesn’t mind a little blood if it furthers his career. Sharpton, now a host on MSNBC, came to fame orchestrating the Tawana Brawley hoax against an innocent man. He fomented a race riot that resulted in death at Freddie’s Fashion Mart in 1995. Violence and the threat of violence have been in Sharpton’s tool box from the beginning of his long, disgraceful career. Obama and his Department of Justice sided with the media and Sharpton, and against the local police, and against the rule of law.

President Obama owes it to the American people to speak out against the possibility of violence but he is unlikely to say anything. What can he say at this point? That he no longer believes his hypothetical son would look like Trayvon? That the Department of Justice’s role early in the controversy was conducted by more “rogue employees.” Obama’s government took a side, and it was the side of racial strife, division, and ultimately the threat of violence if the jury hands down a politically incorrect verdict.

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