The newest Obama scandal is seventeen months old.
Welcome to Trayvongate, where the President of the United States used both the bully pulpit, the Department of Justice and sly media manipulation to gin up charges of racism in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin shooting. Now that the trial is almost finished and the only act of racism mentioned so far came from the victim--Martin called Zimmerman 'a creepy ass cracker' according to testimony--the cynical and repeated use of the race card by the White house is even more abhorrent.
Judicial Watch revealed documents today that proved what Breitbart News reported in April, 2012: that Eric Holder's Department of Justice took an active role in racially charged rallies in Sanford, Florida and that the Community Relations Service helped force the temporary resignation of Sheriff Bill Lee. That resignation made it appear that Sanford authorities were suspect and possibly complicit in covering up something.
Some of my reporting at the time was based on interviews with numerous public officials in Sanford who wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution from the Obama administration. They described a situation where the CRS team took over and forced decisions while clearing a path for protests and rallies that heightened the appearence of racial tensions.
The CRS is a small unit within the Department of Justice and ostensibly it serves a legitimate purpose; attempting to cool down tense situation. As its website says:
The Community Relations Service is the Department's "peacemaker" for community conflicts and tensions arising from differences of race, color, and national origin. Created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, CRS is the only Federal agency dedicated to assist State and local units of government, private and public organizations, and community groups with preventing and resolving racial and ethnic tensions, incidents, and civil disorders, and in restoring racial stability and harmony.However, under the highly politicized Holder Department of Justice, the CRS has acted as 'spies and muscle' according to a source familiar with the unit. In the Zimmerman case, they ended up as doing nothing to facilitate 'racial stability and harmony ', instead acting a heavy thumb on the scales of justice and helping to force events that gave the nation an impression that Martin's death was racially motivated.
Not just George Zimmerman, but the police and the entire town were targeted in rallies that saw people being bused-in for protests. We now have proof via the Judicial Watch release that these rallies were facilitated by the Obama administration. They were also highly racially charged. Close Obama ally Al Sharpton, along with Jesse Jackson, led the charge. As CBS Miami reported:
“We live in the middle of an American paradox,” Rev. Sharpton told the crowd. “We can put a black man in the White House but we cannot walk a black child through a gated neighborhood.
We are not selling out, bowing out or backing down until there is justice for Trayvon.”However, much of the rhetoric surrounding the Zimmerman story was violent. Many will remember that the New Black Panther party actually offered a $10,000 bounty for the 'capture' of George Zimmerman. As the Orlando Sentinal reported:
“This is not about a hoodie, it’s about racial profiling,” Jackson said. “We will use our marching feet, civil disobedience and every weapon in our non-violent arsenal until justice is served.”
New Black Panther leader Mikhail Muhammad announced the reward during a protest in Sanford Saturday. And when asked whether he was inciting violence, Muhammad replied defiantly: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
The bounty announcement came moments after members of the group called for the mobilization of 10,000 black men to capture Zimmerman, who shot Trayvon in a gated Sanford community on Feb. 26.
Muhammad said members of his group would search for Zimmerman themselves in Maitland — where the 28-year old worked before the shooting, employees there told the Orlando Sentinel. He declined to say when the group would begin their search.J. Christian Adams knows the New Black Panther Party well; he resigned his position at the DOJ over the refusal to prosecute the Panthers for the now infamous Philadephia voter intimidation actions during the 2008 election. Adams outlined the crimes committed by the NBPP in Sanford:
Let’s start with solicitation to kidnap. In announcing a reward for the seizure of Zimmerman, the New Black Panthers may have violated Florida Code 787.01. It makes it a felony to “by threat, confining or abducting, or imprisoning another person against his . . . will without lawful authority with intent to . . . terrorize.”
Merely soliciting someone else to do this is also a felony in Florida under Florida Code 777.04. “A person who solicits another to commit an offense prohibited by law and in the course of such solicitation commands, encourages, hires, or requests another person to engage in specific conduct which would constitute such offense or an attempt to commit such offense commits the offense of criminal solicitation.”That's only part of the list. The New Black Panther's outrageous, illegal call for vigilante justice happened on March 24th. According the records obtained by Judicial Watch, the Department of Justice deployed to Sanford the next day: March 25th, 2012. However, the DOJ did not go to Sanford to make arrests against the New Black Panthers. Instead, according the the written record, obtained by Judicial Watch, they "deployed to Sanford, FL, to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a neighborhood watch captain."
Once again, the Holder Department of Justice failed to prosecute the New Black Panther Party. They actually helped facilitate mass rallies against Zimmerman and the City of Sanford.
These actions are made even more scandalous by the direct insertion of the President of the United States into the story. President Obama made his famous "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon" remark at the White House, but what got considerably less press was the fact that Obama had a prior relationship with Martin's attorney Benjamin Crump. Obama worked with him on another racially charged case when he was a Senator.
Breitbart News reported on the Obama connection to the 2006 story of Martin Lee Anderson. Attorney Crump said publicly that he was following the same media 'playbook' as the Anderson case. Tactics included using a photo of Anderson as a child, the same way the media used the Crump-supplied photo of Trayvon Martin as child. This story from 2006 shows the involvement of Senator Obama (who did not end up appearing at the rally), Sharpton and Jackson as well as other usual suspects from the far left.
A rally will be taking place in Tallahassee Friday, April 21 regarding the ongoing investigation into the death of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson. Anderson died Jan. 6 at a Panhandle boot camp after being kneed and punched by Bay County Sheriff's boot camp guards.
Students from Florida State University, Tallahassee Community College and Florida A&M University have been involved in the planning and organization of the event at which Rev. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton will be making appearances.
Charlie and Martin Sheen, who donated $10,000 to the cause, are also reportedly planning to attend Friday, along with former TLC member Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins and Afeni Shakur, mother of the murdered rapper Tupac Shakur. According Samantha Greer, an FSU student and volunteer for the Coalition for Justice for Martin Lee Anderson, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois may also make an appearance. Greer stressed that the Coalition is still looking for volunteers and that anyone is welcome to join the cause.What we saw in 2012 was the Obama administration using taxpayer resources to ratchet up racial tensions in a local crime case and literally creating key story points in the narrative, such as forcing the sheriff to temporarily resign. At the same time, the President himself made an emotional statement about the victim with direct reference to his race, without revealing that he had worked with the victim's attorney a few years earlier in a similar case. At the same time, Obama media ally (and Sharpton employer) NBC outrageously edited the Zimmerman audio to make Zimmerman appear racist. All these manipulative and deceptive uses of the race card--pushed along by the Holder DOJ at taxpayer expense--happened just months before the 2012 presidential election.
The only reason this isn't a major scandal already is the media hasn't ever done its job and declared it one.
Big Government
