In the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the White House tried to assure angry supporters of the Trayvon Martin family that the investigation would continue. Eric Holder yesterday told a luncheon that “I share your concern” over the “tragic, unnecessary shooting death,” while members of Congress pushed the Department of Justice to take some kind of action to address the situation. Today, though, the Washington Post hears from sources within the DoJ that federal action is all but impossible:
Current and former Justice Department officials said Monday that bringing civil rights charges against George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old in Florida, would be extremely difficult and may not be possible.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. vowed to continue a federal investigation of the matter, but other officials said in interviews that the government may not be able to charge Zimmerman with a federal hate crime because it’s not clear that he killed Martin because of his race.
The weakness of the evidence compounds the political problems facing President Obama and Holder, who are under mounting pressure from many liberal and African American groups to bring a federal case against Zimmerman after a Florida jury acquitted him Saturday of second-degree murder and manslaughter.
Actually, it’s more clear that race was not a motivating factor. The FBI determined that already in its report, picked up by The Smoking Gun and published over the weekend. One of the jurors in the case emphasized that last night in an interview with Anderson Cooper on CNN:
The six-member jury that acquitted George Zimmerman did not believe race played a role in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, the first juror to speak publicly about the trial said Monday night....
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
