July 17, 2013
Zimmerman prosecutor Angela Corey may face a reckoning
Angela Corey, the special prosecutor who struck out going after George Zimmerman, has not taken defeat well. At Red State, streiff catalogues her outrageous behavior in an article that should be read in its entirety:
I think everyone can now agree on one thing, Angela Corey was possibly the worst possible choice for a high profile prosecution.
She has a sense of entitlement that is so typical of small people promoted to jobs that are well above their level of competency but who lack the self-awareness to recognize what everyone else knows. (You need look no further than her bizarre post-verdict press conference that she treated as though it was an Academy Awards acceptance rather than a repudiation to see that she occupies a different reality than most.) In Angela Corey's world, criticism of her is a basis for legal action. She has threatened to sue Harvard if it did not fire Alan freakin Dershowitz after he pointed out her lack of legal acumen and ethics. In Florida she is something of a legend for threatening her critics.
Her lack of concern for the rule of law was almost immediately apparent. Shortly after she received the case she gave a press conference in which she disclosed that she was not seeking justice, but "justice for Trayvon":
Corey: The first thing my team and I did upon being appointed was to meet with Trayvon's family and pray with them. "We opened our meeting with prayer." Also, Ms. Corey thanked "all those people across this country who have sent positive energy and prayers our way," and she asked them to continue to pray for Trayvon's family and for her team. "Remember, it is Trayvon's family that are our constitutional victims...."
In short, the press conference seemed calculated to declare Zimmerman guilty before an investigation was completed or a trial conducted, conduct, which the article notes, runs counter to Florida law and American Bar Association professional standards.
In the ongoing national Get Zimmie psychodrama launched by the left, Corey is auditioning for the role of villain. And she may face a reckoning in court. Chris Francescani of Reuters writes:
A former employee of Florida State Attorney Angela Corey's office plans to file a whistleblower lawsuit against George Zimmerman's prosecutors, his attorney told Reuters on Tuesday.
Ben Kruidbos, Corey's former director of information technology, was fired after testifying at a pre-trial hearing on June 6 that prosecutors failed to turn over potentially embarrassing evidence extracted from Martin's cell phone to the defense, as required by evidence-sharing laws."We will be filing a whistleblower action in (Florida's Fourth Judicial District) Circuit Court," said Kruidbos' attorney Wesley White, himself a former prosecutor who was hired by Corey but resigned in December because he disagreed with her prosecutorial priorities. He said the suit will be filed within the next 30 days.
If blacks start flocking to defend Corey, they will be defending a prosecutor that made a practice of charging young black criminals as adults. Streiff notes:
In 2011, she prosecuted a 12 year old boy, Cristian Fernandez, as an adult with every intention of sending him away for life. In a move eerily similar to Corey having George Zimmerman's wife, Shellie, indicted for perjury, Corey has also prosecuted Fernandez's mother. This case got the attention of those defenders of the Philadelphia polling places, the New Black Panther Party.
The next year, Corey's office charged a 31-year old black woman, Marissa Alexander, with attempted murder when she fired a weapon, during an altercation with her ex-husband who was under a restraining order. Alexander is serving a 20-year sentence. The Florida NAACP was not amused.
Beyond these cases, there is the fact that Corey's office leads the state in prosecuting black juveniles as adults.
In fact she prosecutes black juveniles as adults 20% above the statewide average.
Ian Tuttle at NRO describes some other issues Corey is handing her critics:
Corey knows about personal vendettas. They seem to be her specialty. When Ron Littlepage, a journalist for the Florida Times-Union, wrote a column criticizing her handling of the Christian Fernandez case - in which Corey chose to prosecute a twelve-year-old boy for first-degree murder, who wound up locked in solitary confinement in an adult jail prior to his court date - she "fired off a two-page, single-spaced letter on official state-attorney letterhead hinting at lawsuits for libel."
And that was moderate. When Corey was appointed to handle the Zimmerman case, Talbot "Sandy" D'Alemberte, a former president of both the American Bar Association and Florida State University, criticized the decision: "I cannot imagine a worse choice for a prosecutor to serve in the Sanford case. There is nothing in Angela Corey's background that suits her for the task, and she cannot command the respect of people who care about justice." Corey responded by making a public-records request of the university for all e-mails, text messages, and phone messages in which D'Alemberte had mentioned Fernandez. Like Littlepage, D'Alemberte had earlier criticized Corey's handling of the Fernandez case. (snip)
Shortly after Dershowitz's criticisms, Harvard Law School's dean's office received a phone call. When the dean refused to pick up, Angela Corey spent a half hour demanding of an office-of-communications employee that Dershowitz be fired. According to Dershowitz, Corey threatened to sue Harvard, to try to get him disbarred, and also to sue him for slander and libel. Corey also told the communications employee that she had assigned a state investigator - an employee of the State of Florida, that is - to investigate Dershowitz. "That's an abuse of office right there," Dershowitz says.
So the campaign against Dershowitz is part of a pattern of going after critics. But consider for a moment how delusional it was to waste her time telephoning Harvard Law School in an effort to get a famous tenured professor fired for criticizing her. She lives in a fantasy world where professors at Harvard can't get away with crticizing her. If she is put under a microscope, Angela Corey is going to be her own undoing. Megalomania never works out well in the end.
April 14, 2020
Zimmerman Prosecutors Deny the Undeniable As Lawsuit Proceeds
By Jack Cashill
George Zimmerman's lawsuit saga is unfolding though the Florida court system in the form of depositions and a powerful but little known tool called "Requests for Admissions."
Under Florida Law, a plaintiff can submit a list of up to 30 questions, each beginning, "Admit that you...." Under penalty of perjury, the defendant must either admit or deny each statement. If the defendant doesn’t bother to answer any of the questions, the court assumes that they are admitted as true.
In the way of background, Zimmerman is charging that Trayvon Martin’s support team, including Martin’s parents and their attorney Benjamin Crump, knowingly substituted an imposter witness for the real “phone witness” in order to secure Zimmerman’s arrest for the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman and his attorney Larry Klayman were inspired to launch the suit based on the research of filmmaker Joel Gilbert, as seen in his documentary film and book of the same name, “The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America.”
Among the eleven defendants in this case, arguably the most vulnerable are the prosecutors who brought it, former state attorney Angela Corey and former assistant state attorneys Bernie de la Rionda and John Guy. Corey and de la Rionda have both since retired, and Guy is now a sitting Florida judge.
In reading through their respective responses, one gets the sense that Corey and Guy are setting up lead prosecutor de la Rionda for the fall. Corey, for one, has washed her hands of all responsibility. She replied to each of the questions with the same answer, “COREY is unable to admit or deny the statement... as her involvement in this case was very limited, such that, she does not have personal knowledge of the information requested.”
This is the same Angela Corey who, on April 11, 2012, presided over a press conference at which the following words were read, “Angela Corey, state attorney, charges that in the county of Seminole, state of Florida, on February 26th, 2012, George Zimmerman unlawfully and dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, did kill Trayvon Martin.”
At the same press conference, Corey admitted her involvement in the case from the beginning. Said Corey of her initial meeting with her alleged co-conspirators: “Bernie was there. John was there. Our prosecution team was there. The first thing we did was pray with [Trayvon’s parents]. We opened our meeting in prayer. Mr. Crump and Mr. Parks were there.”
“We don't make arrests due to public pressure,” Corey assured the media. Al Sharpton knew better. “Had there not been pressure,” he told MSNBC later that day, “there would not have been a second look.”
If Corey did not have “personal knowledge” of the case, even on her “second look,” one has to wonder how she could have issued the arrest warrant or why she described Zimmerman immediately after his acquittal as a “murderer.”
Judge Guy does not claim ignorance to the degree Corey does, but he absolves himself nonetheless, or at least tries to. No, he was not present at de la Rionda’s first interview with the imposter Jeantel in April 2012. No, he did not help draft the affidavit of arrest.
Beyond that, Guy seeks safe harbor in incompetence. He admits to not verifying Jeantel’s authenticity, not doing any handwriting analysis, not checking Martin’s cell phone records, not comparing the voices of the fake “Diamond Eugene,” Rachel Jeantel, with the real “Diamond Eugene,” Brittany Diamond Eugene. Indeed, he followed none of the routine investigatory leads that filmmaker Joel Gilbert eventually followed to their not too subtle conclusion.
Like Guy, de la Rionda pleads incompetence. Among other failures, he admits he did not “verify that Rachel Jeantel was Diamond Eugene as she had claimed.” Nor did he “attempt to verify that the voice, tone, and inflections of the 16- year-old girl named Diamond who was recorded in the roughly 20 minute phone interview conducted by Benjamin Crump on March 19, 2012 matched the voice, tone, and inflections of 18-year-old Rachel Jeantel in your recorded interview on April 2, 2012 and her later statements.”
Had de la Rionda simply chalked his poor performance up to carelessness or indifference, he would have been on relatively safe ground legally. Inexplicably, however, he waded into some seriously murky waters.
When asked whether he investigated the discrepancies between what the real Diamond Eugene said during a March 19 phone call and what Rachel Jeantel said under oath during an April 2 interview, de la Rionda’s attorney responded for him, “de la Rionda denies that he recorded an interview of Rachel Jeantel on or about April 2, 2012.”
This undeniably false claim was made twice in de la Rionda’s official “Response to Request for Admissions.” Nor was he using the word “recorded” to evade responsibility. In response to another question, de la Rionda denied that he “conducted the April 2, 2012, interview.” The interview was audiotaped. I have listened to it many times myself and read the transcript. I do not know who pushed the “record” button, but de la Rionda surely conducted it.
The description of events originally served up by Brittany Diamond Eugene, finessed by attorney Benjamin Crump, and then sworn clumsily under oath by Rachel Jeantel, formed the foundation of the case against Zimmerman and led directly to the affidavit for his arrest.
“During this time,” claimed the affidavit, “Martin was on the phone with a friend and described to her what was happening. The witness advised that Martin was scared because he was followed through the complex by an unknown male and didn’t know why.” Yes, Martin was on the phone with a friend, but every other detail was false, and the prosecutors admittedly allowed each of these details to go uncorrected.
True to form, de la Rionda also denied “that he prepared the affidavit of probably [sic] cause.” This was true only in the narrowest sense. Under oath during the bond hearing, Investigator Dale Gilbreath, the named author of the affidavit, matter-of-factly implied that de la Rionda made the final decision as to what would be included in the affidavit.
It is understandable why other parties in the case would lie. At least three of them have done it before under oath, and they have got a lot to lose.
What motivates de la Rionda’s dishonesty is unclear. Says Gilbert, “How could De la Rionda not know that the punishment in the state of Florida for the crime of perjury in an official proceeding is punishable by up to five years in prison, five years of probation, and a $5,000 in fines for each instance?”
The prosecutors and the others involved have to be sweating the response of Trayvon’s actual girlfriend and real phone witness, Brittany Diamond Eugene. The recent criminal justice graduate of Florida State University has changed lawyers twice already, but she has never lied under oath. She has no compelling reason to start now. Maybe that’s why she did not respond to her “Requests for Admissions”?
Jack Cashill’s forthcoming book Unmasking Obama is available for pre-order at Amazon.
June 30, 2020
Time to Expose the Fraud That Launched BLM
By Jack Cashill
On Black Lives Matter's website, the organization's radical founders trace the creation of their movement "to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murderer, George Zimmerman."
Had those founders paid any attention to the trial, they would have known that Zimmerman should never have been charged with murder, let alone tried. The fact that he was arrested can be attributed to a stunningly blatant fraud orchestrated by the attorney who has been prominently milking the racial divide he helped create, Benjamin Crump.
As it happens, the one person capable of exposing this fraud is George Zimmerman. All Zimmerman needs is his own Atticus Finch, an attorney brave enough to resist the howling mob and stand up for the truth.
In the way of background, Zimmerman has filed a suit in the Circuit Court of Florida's Tenth Judicial Circuit. The evidence is overwhelming that Trayvon Martin's support team, including Martin's parents and their attorney, Benjamin Crump, knowingly substituted an imposter witness for the real "phone witness" in order to secure Zimmerman's arrest for the 2012 shooting death of Martin.
Also named in the suit are the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE); the State of Florida; former state attorneys Bernie de la Rionda, John Guy, and Angela Corey, and HarperCollins, the publisher of Crump's defamatory book, Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People.
In a 2012 deposition, the perjured testimony of the imposter in question, Rachel Jeantel, enabled the State of Florida to arrest Zimmerman and take him to trial. Evidence strongly suggests that state attorneys knew that the witness was a fraud.
Zimmerman was inspired to launch the suit based on the dogged research done by Los Angeles filmmaker Joel Gilbert for his documentary film and book of the same name, The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America.
Attorney Larry Klayman was brave enough to file the suit, but Zimmerman has parted ways with him and is now seeking a Florida attorney with a strong knowledge of state procedures to push the suit through to its conclusion.
The defendants effectively ruined Zimmerman's life on April 2, 2012, five weeks after the shooting. On that fateful day, de la Rionda flew to Miami from Jacksonville to depose Brittany "Diamond" Eugene, the girl who was on the phone with Trayvon up to the moment of his death.
Trayvon's mother, Sybrina Fulton, had met with the real Diamond Eugene at least once before in mid-March. Crump may have met with her as well. He certainly coached her to follow his fraudulent script of a raging Zimmerman stalking and killing the scared little boy Trayvon Martin. His phone interview with Diamond was recorded by ABC's Matt Gutman and broadcast.
On April 2, when Fulton drove with de la Rionda to Diamond's home, they were redirected to another address. "I knocked on the door and asked for Diamond," Fulton said in a 2013 deposition. According to the lawsuit, "[r]ather than Defendant Eugene coming to the door, Defendant Jeantel appeared and claimed that she was 'Diamond Eugene.'"
In The Trayvon Hoax, Gilbert did a brilliant job identifying and locating the real Diamond Eugene, a then-16-year-old Haitian-American hottie who stole Trayvon's heart.
State attorneys had full access to the steamy text exchanges between Diamond and Trayvon, many of which had photos attached. Reads the suit, "Defendant Eugene could in no way be mistaken for Defendant Jeantel, who was 2 years older, 5 inches taller, and about 120 pounds heavier than Defendant Eugene." While we are on the subject of height, little Trayvon was about half a foot taller than Zimmerman.
There is overwhelming evidence that Crump orchestrated the witness switch when the real Diamond refused to lie under oath. Someone then recruited Diamond's mentally challenged half-sister, Jeantel, to pretend to be Diamond.
Of all those being sued, it is only Sybrina Fulton who provably knew that Jeantel was an imposter. Fulton is running for commissioner in Miami-Dade County with Hillary Clinton's open support.
As Trayvon's mother, Fulton has emerged as something of an icon in national Democratic politics. The media have done everything possible to protect not just Fulton, despite her obvious involvement, but the entire phony narrative. The response of the Miami Herald to this scandal has been nothing short of disgraceful.
Zimmerman remains impressively upbeat. Although "disheartened to see Crump using the same playbook to divide the country," he has been encouraged by the response to the Trayvon Hoax film since Gilbert put it up for free on YouTube.
"My faith in humanity has been restored by reading the comments on Joel's movie," Zimmerman told me recently. He particularly appreciates hearing from young people whose minds have been changed from watching the film. Some sample responses:
I had thought Zimmerman was the man the media made him out to be. Thank god, you made an excellent documentary with much class & dignity. Thank you for showing up & balancing the real scales of justice. Wow.
20 min in and I'm mad as s---, and I'm black.
Wow, I am in complete shock! Thank you!
I'm black and I knew something was up. I couldn't find enough information on the case. This is amazing, thanks man, I've been trying to convince people it was self defense, they won't listen.
I thought I had made it to the peak of my disgust for the media's blatant lies, but this, this is a WHOLE new level!! This is BETRAYAL to a young black man traumatized by the fear-mongering pushed out as a result of this case, and indoctrinated at TWELVE YEARS OLD with the idea that I was being "hunted down everywhere I went" because of my race. BETRAYAL!!.
The last quote nails it. One brave attorney can help undo the racial madness into which much of this country has descended since the death of Trayvon Martin. If interested, please contact gzattorneycontact@gmail.com.
@jackcashill's forthcoming book, Unmasking Obama, is available for pre-order at Amazon.
Image: Johnny Silvercloud via Flickr (cropped).
July 18, 2013
Why did the Trayvon Martin Shooting go National?
By Roy Cheaney
Have you ever wondered why one story gets national attention and others don't? Thanks to the researchers at Judicial Watch, we have a good idea how this happened in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case.
Through their requests for documents from local, state and federal authorities, Judicial Watch researchers were able to obtain hundreds of documents and emails pertaining to the case. This information helped Judicial Watch prove that a little-known unit of the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Community Relations Service (CRS), was deployed to Sanford following the Trayvon Martin shooting to help organize and manage rallies and protests against George Zimmerman.
Hidden among these documents were emails dated from just after the shooting that referenced Trayvon Martin's uncle, Ronald Fulton.
Ronald Fulton is on the executive committee of the Community Relations Board (CRB) of Miami-Dade County. The stated mission of the Community Relations Board of Miami-Dade County reads in part: "The primary mission of the Community Relations Board is to intervene and contain community tensions, as quickly as possible." The CRB is part of a larger section of the Miami-Dade government known as the Office of Community Advocacy whose mission statement reads: "The Office of Community Advocacy (OCAd) is charged with making Miami-Dade County "One Community" that embraces our diverse enriched and unique population."
A few days after Martin's death on February 26, 2012 emails detailing the incident and Mr. Fulton's relation to Trayvon Martin were initiated. Since the City of Sanford where the shooting occurred didn't have a community relations board or a community advocacy section in the government, it appears that the Miami-Dade CRB and OCAd boards took over.
A March 9, 2012 email from the OCAd reads:
ATTENTION CRB AND ADVOCACY BOARD LEADERS
FYI: You may recall that the nephew of CRB Executive Committee member Ronald Fulton was shot and killed under mysterious circumstances on February 26, 2012 while visiting his family in Sanford Florida. Trayvon Martin was 17 years of age. The 25 year old man who admitted shooting Trayvon has not been arrested. There is growing community interest and national and local media coverage of the case and CRB leaders and staff are monitoring local tensions. The CRB extends deep condolences to Mr.Martin's family and friends.
See below CBS morning news coverage of the controversial shooting of Trayvon Martin, a resident of Miami-Dade District 1. See also below an on-line petition that has been started by a reader of the Miami Herald article on the Martin killing that appeared today, March 9. The CRB Executive Committee met Wednesday, March 7 and this troubling situation was discussed. The Executive Committee recommended to Mr.Fulton that he contact the Office of County Commisioner Barbara Jordan, who represents the community where Trayvon's family resides, for constituent services. Mr.Fulton has done so. The CRB is working to determine the level of tension here in Miami-Dade and leaders will respond as appropriate. We have been in touch with Commissioner Jordan's office and are conferring on next steps. We will keep you informed on further developments.
Approximately one hour after this email was sent it was forwarded by OCAd to Mildred Duprey de Robles, the head of the Miami field office of the CRS and to Thomas Battles, the head of the regional CRS office. After contact was made with the CRS, Mr. Fulton's name only appears in four other emails, all of which relate essentially the same information.
In comparison to the numerous emails obtained, these few may seem insignificant. However, the fact that Mr. Fulton's name and relationship to Martin was no longer being used doesn't mean that it was forgotten by members of the OCAd and was no longer a factor in their efforts. In fact, it would be highly unusual for them to forget that Martin was the nephew of a CRB Executive Committee member. Dozens of additional emails and documents initiated by the OCAd continued to promote the Trayvon Martin case well after Mr. Fulton's name was no longer being mentioned.
To be sure, there were others both inside and outside of government who were trying to shine a light on this incident. However, Mr.Fulton's seat on the Executive Committee of the local Community Relations Board played no small part in the Trayvon Martin story going from local to regional and then to national levels.