Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, et al: The Left’s Criminal Prosecutions Are Not About Convictions
- Sue and settle. Leftist special interests employ “sue and settle” sham litigation to achieve political objectives. This involves suing a sympathetic government agency regulator (e.g., the EPA) in order to reach an out-of-court settlement that binds the agency to change a regulation that favors the special interest. This is how environmental regulations have been perverted by global warming activists and others (e.g., 60 such settlements during Obama’s first term). The sue and settle strategy has morphed into suing private companies on cancel culture-related grounds in order to force changes in company policies and obtain public virtue-signaling pronouncements (e.g., company-mandated critical race theory training and “donations” to Black Lives Matter).
- Move the political needle. Leftist lawsuits and prosecutions are frequently filed simply to advance Democrat political orthodoxy, goals, and objectives throughout America. The filings are broken as major news by Democrat operatives in the legacy media and conform to prevailing Democrat narratives such as “the police are racist,” “all white people are inherently racists,” “racial profiling is a racist police tactic,” “man-made global warming is destroying the planet,” “gun violence in America is out of control,” “white supremacists/nationalists are the real domestic terrorist threats,” etc.
- Raise expectations. Every high-profile leftwing lawsuit that is trumpeted by the legacy media serves to raise the expectations of various Democrat constituent groups that “justice will be served” regardless of whether the evidence leads to a conviction. In fact, foreknowledge of the lack of evidence – or that there is exonerating evidence – does not factor into the decision to sue or prosecute if there is a Democrat political benefit to be gained.
- Keep the issue in the public consciousness. Even weak cases have value, which is why they are filed in the first place. Lawsuits and prosecutions take months to complete – and unravel if they are weak. In those months, the legacy media can generate dozens (or even hundreds) of articles that spin the cases according to pro-Democrat narratives. This keeps the political issue underlying those cases in the public eye while reinforcing Democrat-propagated myths. Toss in a few street protests with inflammatory placards outside the courthouse, and the “news stories” almost write themselves.
- Radicalize the Left’s victim groups. Losing high-profile cases can actually be beneficial to the Left, as that “proves” and reinforces the belief that the system is rigged against “<name of the particular Democrat constituency goes here>.” Lawfare in support of constituent groups is actually a political tactic in radicalizing people!
Over the years, the National Lawyer’s Guild (NLG) has perfected using the courts to advance leftist objectives since its founding by Communists:
Officially launched in 1937 as a progressive alternative to the segregated and comparatively conservative American Bar Association, the NLG was inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Communist Party’s newly launched Popular Front movement, the newly revitalized trade-union movement, and the increased activity of the NAACP. As evidenced by its Comintern roots, there were certainly members of the early Guild who were dedicated Communist revolutionaries. NLG founding member David Freedman, for instance, candidly advocated socialism as a desirable alternative to American capitalism. Communist Party USA (CPUSA) attorneys were also among the NLG’s founders. Indeed, the CPUSA required communist attorneys to become Guild members because the organization was evolving into the chief legal instrument of the Party.
The NLG has supported virtually every leftwing anti-American cause since its inception: defense of violent protest groups in the ‘60s, the anti-nuke movement of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Marxist liberation movements in the ‘80s and ‘90s, “migrant” causes (e.g., sanctuary cities) in the ‘00s, and just about every radical group imaginable (Weathermen, SDS, Black Panthers, FALN, Viet Cong, Sandinistas, PLO, Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, BLM, and Antifa). Anything to undermine and destroy the US Constitution and American cultural and political institutions in their quest to “transform America”:
In a Program Committee policy statement issued at the NLG’s 1971 national convention in Denver, the Guild made plain its desire to radically transform America: “There is no disagreement among us that we are a body of radicals and revolutionaries. We are not simply servants of the movement. We are radicals and revolutionaries who now propose to carry the struggle for social change into our lives and our profession.”
Many Democrat lawyers make common political cause with the NLG and have carried forward their legal tactics in high-profile cases for some of the ulterior motives that were highlighted above. Let us examine some of those cases and try to spot the motives:
2012: Trayvon Martin. Trayvon Martin was killed after leaving a convenience store in a scuffle with George Zimmerman. The New York Times reported Zimmerman as a “white Hispanic” for political optics purposes (the inference that “white man kills unarmed black youth”). Zimmerman was later acquitted of second-degree murder, but only after months of media speculation and raised expectations among some in the black community. Obama personally capitalized on the tragedy by referring to Martin in this way: “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” The case was used to push for gun control – a main Democrat political objective and later was used to help jump-start Black Lives Matter and racial division. [Move the political needle, Raise expectations, Keep the issue in the public consciousness, Radicalize the Left’s victims groups all apply.]
2014: Michael Brown. This is the case that created the much-repeated slogan, “Hands up; don’t shoot.” Falsely characterized by the Democrat-media complex as a classic example of “police violence,” even the slogan was later debunked. But the case accomplished a major political objective: “The Black Lives Matter movement was born of the Michael Brown shooting. … Brown wasn’t surrendering and didn’t say don’t shoot. And he wasn’t a victim of police misconduct.” And the legacy media persisted in perpetuating that myth into 2017, with this CNN article being but one example. [Move the political needle, Raise expectations, Keep the issue in the public consciousness, Radicalize the Left’s victims groups all apply.]
2017-2020: Michael Flynn. Democrat operatives in DoJ, the FBI, and, later, the Mueller Special Counsel Office, investigated and prosecuted retired Lieutenant General Flynn for three years in one of the highest-profile political cases in decades only to have DoJ drop the case in May 2020 when revelations of FBI corruption because publicly known. The case was used by the Democrat-media complex to perpetuate the Russian collusion hoax. The case nearly derailed the Trump administration, which was in fact the political objective of the Democrats, to begin with. And there are many Americans who still wrongly believe that Flynn was guilty and was not being framed by the FBI. [Move the political needle, Raise expectations, Keep the issue in the public consciousness all apply to this case.]
2017-2019: Mueller Special Counsel. While largely a political investigation, make no mistake the 17-odd Democrat lawyers in the Special Counsel’s investigation of alleged “Trump-Russia collusion” were looking for evidence supporting criminal conduct against the President and his allies. The Democrats were expecting many indictments, including conclusions of criminal conduct by the President, but that of course did not happen. Nevertheless, the Democrats achieved much by politically dividing the country and stonewalling much of the Trump agenda in Congress for four years. How many thousands of articles did the legacy media generate in their feverish attempts to “prove” Trump-Russia collusion along the way? And it was all just a hoax. [Move the political needle, Raise expectations, Keep the issue in the public consciousness all apply to this case.]
2020: George Floyd. The death of George Floyd due to a drug overdose while being arrested on suspicion of using counterfeit currency in a convenience store in Minneapolis in May 2020 was the trigger for widespread violent riots in many American cities by BLM and Antifa members that continue in some of those cities to the present day. Snippets of videos from bystanders were used to construct the narrative that “the black Floyd was killed by white police officer Derek Chauvin.” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a left-wing Democrat, led a high-profile public effort to bring charges against Chauvin and three others. The Chauvin trial is presently underway in Minnesota. Two autopsies were released within a week declaring that Floyd’s death was a homicide. Subsequently, the real truth has emerged that Floyd had a fatal level of fentanyl in his system, which was the real cause of death. Read the entire autopsy report here. And the entire police video was finally released to the public, which told a much different story than the Democrat-media narrative of “death by homicide.” Watch this for yourself and draw your own conclusions as to cause of death and the likely outcomes of the trials of those four police officers charged in Floyd’s death:
2020: The McCloskeys. On 28 June 2020, Mark and Patricia McCloskey were in fear for their lives and property, as several of the 300-500 protestors who entered their gated community threatened them outside their home. Radical St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner issued felony charges against the couple in June for unlawful use of a weapon and convened a grand jury in June to investigate the case. Mrs. McCloskey told Sean Hannity in an interview on 6 July, “[They said] that they were going to kill us. They were going to come in there. They were going to burn down the house.” On 10 July, police served a warrant to the McCloskeys and seized the rifle that was brandished by Mark McCloskey to defend his home. On 6 October, the grand jury indicted the McCloskeys “on counts of exhibiting a weapon and tampering with evidence.” A viral video of the incident had been used for the purposes of political agitation by gun control advocates, as well as BLM activists. In December, a St. Louis judge disqualified Gardner from the case due to an appearance of political motivation in pursuing the prosecution of the McCloskeys. On 22 January 2021, a St. Louis court rejected “Gardner’s second appeal to be reinstated as a prosecutor” in the case. Defending one’s home and property is an inherent and traditional right that virtually every American understands. Yet, a Soros-supported attorney chose to prosecute two people who defended their home and lives against BLM demonstrators for clearly political reasons (she played directly to the pro-BLM and anti-gun control constituency of the Democrat Party). [Move the political needle, Raise expectations, Keep the issue in the public consciousness all apply to this case.]
2021: Capitol Hill Rioters. The FBI and DoJ could not seem to successfully investigate and prosecute thousands of violent BLM and Antifa rioters for dozens of crimes in 2020, but they have been quick to mount “one of the largest investigations in history” (as reported by NPR) against Trump supporters (and others) who entered the Capitol building by DC police on 6 January. The Democrats and their operatives in the media were quick to propagate the lie that those events were an “armed insurrection,” but that fell apart when the FBI admitted that no guns were confiscated on 6 January. Yet, the massive investigation continues with 400 arrests to date, and with a federal prosecutor recently claiming that he thinks there is enough evidence to charge people with “sedition.” Oh, really. Never mind the presence of known Antifa members during the riot, or that a number of the Proud Boys being investigated were FBI informants, including Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio. Could there be a straight line between the Flynn frame job and this investigation? Stranger things have happened. In any event, the Democrats are getting massive political mileage out of this, including perpetrating a purge of “white nationalists/supremacists” in the military and attempting to refocus federal law enforcement on de facto Trump supporters loosely defined as “white nationalists who stormed Capitol Hill.” [Move the political needle, Raise expectations, Keep the issue in the public consciousness all apply to this case.]
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