Let’s step back and take a long, hard look at what Eric Holder’s Justice Department is doing right now.
George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. He has no further business in court with the state of Florida and is a free man.
Rather than accept the jury’s verdict, Holder’s DOJ convened a conference call with several left-wing groups to plot a course to continue harassing Zimmerman. With FBI agents on the call, Holder sought information from those groups to help build a case.
Do those groups know Zimmerman or have any personal knowledge of the case that was not presented in the trial? It’s extremely unlikely that they do.
Holder’s DOJ is also releasing an email address to which people are being exhorted to send tips about George Zimmerman, again, to build a case against him.
Did George Zimmerman rob a bank? Did he shoot an airplane out of the sky? Did he bring a building down?
No. He was acquitted by a jury in a fair court trial.
But the United States Department of Justice is focusing on this one man, who has been put through due process and acquitted in a court of law.
Today, we learn that the United States Department of Justice is ordering the state of Florida to break its own law.
The state case against Zimmerman is over. He won. He is entitled under Florida law to assume custody of any of his property that the state seized in the process of prosecuting him.
Holder says no, he can’t have it.
The U.S. Department of Justice, overseen by Attorney General Eric Holder, has ordered the Sanford, Florida police department to keep possession of all the evidence from George Zimmerman’s second-degree murder trial – including the exonerated neighborhood watch volunteer’s gun.
Sanford police confirmed on Thursday that the DOJ asked the agency not to return any pieces of evidence to their owners. Zimmerman was expected to get his firearm back by month’s end.
The development is a sign that the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is seriously investigating Zimmerman to determine if federal civil rights charges should be filed.
Many commentators have looked at the case and already concluded that Holder’s DOJ will not charge Zimmerman. I’m not so sure.
While Holder’s DOJ has been quick off the mark to continue persecuting Zimmerman, it still has not contacted any of the Tea Party groups abused by the IRS. That’s a political decision.
Holder appears to be setting the stage to file some kind of federal charges against Zimmerman. He is either doing that, or he is setting his allies on the left up for a major, and very public, disappointment.
Ask yourself which he is more likely to do: Follow the law, or disappoint the Democrat base going into the mid-terms in 2014?
If Holder intends to disappoint the party’s left-wing base, he would do it now, get it over with, and move on. But every sign points to him pursuing the case now and well into 2014. That’s every bit as political a decision as failing to follow up on the IRS abuse.
The show trial must go on.
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