The myth that black teen Trayvon Martin was a victim of racist violence was foisted on Americans by unscrupulous prosecutors in Florida who perpetrated “the most spectacular case of identity fraud in modern American judicial history” to frighten black Americans into continuing to vote for Democrats, according to a new film by documentary filmmaker Joel Gilbert.
From the time that the 17-year-old Martin was killed on Feb. 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, Americans were transfixed by what Gilbert terms the “seminal race hoax of the Obama years.”
The story of Martin and Latino neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who killed Martin in self-defense and was acquitted of second-degree murder by a jury, received saturation media coverage from journalists convinced—based on scant evidence—that a grave racial injustice had been done.
Even though then-Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee refused to pursue charges against Zimmerman, a toxic mix of narrative-driven journalists, political activists, and Obama administration officials agitated for weeks, until angry mobs convinced local authorities to take action in a politically motivated murder prosecution that should never have been brought, critics have long maintained.
The hoax was amplified by then-President Barack Obama, who injected himself into the story.
“But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin: If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama told Americans.
The Obama administration shipped government-paid community organizers to Sanford after Martin’s death, government documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act showed. In the weeks before Zimmerman was charged, the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice sent paid political activists to organize marches in which participants exacerbated racial tensions and loudly demanded that he be prosecuted.
Racial demagogue Al Sharpton latched onto Martin’s parents early in the saga. The parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, appeared at a press conference with Sharpton’s activist group, National Action Network, held in the nation’s capital in mid-April 2012.
Healing Needed
“I think some healing needs to take place,” Gilbert said at a presser following the screening.The Trayvon hoax, as Gilbert calls it, “was ground zero for all the fake news and race hoaxes that followed,” he said.
Without it, “there would have been no Ferguson,” he said, referring to the violent backlash that followed the killing of black youth Michael Brown in Missouri on Aug. 9, 2014. Brown, as federal investigators eventually concluded long after much of Ferguson was destroyed by mob violence, was killed in self-defense by a white police officer whose gun he tried to grab.
The Trayvon Martin hoax gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, Gilbert said, which, in turn, was bolstered by the myth that Brown was an innocent cut down by the systemic racism that supposedly plagues America.
“How many black youth were killed from all of this nonsense?” he said, adding that “a legal reckoning” is needed to promote racial reconciliation.
The biggest culprits in the Trayvon Martin saga are the media, according to Gilbert.
“Look, obviously, here we are. I sent out 20,000 press releases and hundreds of emails to Press Club members, including mostly, overwhelmingly, leftist journalists, and they’re not here today. Half the place is empty,” he said, referring to the rented ballroom where the presser was taking place.
“So we know from our recent history that they do try to ignore information and stories which are not favorable to their storyline, the storyline in this case being that black Americans must vote Democratic out of fear of America, the rest of the country.”
Fake Witness
Gilbert researched 750 pages of Martin’s cell phone records, which included 3,000 photos and 1,500 contacts. He was “a good kid with many friends and family that loved him,” Gilbert said, but whose life went into a downward spiral in his final months as “his pain played out in reckless behaviors such as fighting, gun dealing, and heavy marijuana use.”On the day he died, Martin was smitten with Brittany Diamond Eugene, a teenaged girl who had stolen his heart. Gilbert’s film presents evidence that Martin was on his cellphone with his “Diamond” until the moment he died.
It was a recorded telephone interview that Diamond did with Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump and ABC News that ultimately led to Zimmerman’s arrest and sensational 2013 trial. In the end, a jury acquitted Zimmerman on July 13, 2013.
But throughout the evidence-gathering process and the trial, Diamond refused to speak with state prosecutors or testify against Zimmerman under oath.
As Gilbert shows, somehow, 18-year-old Rachel Jeantel, who barely knew Martin, replaced Diamond as the star prosecution witness against Zimmerman. Despite the picture painted of her, Jeantel wasn’t the so-called phone witness who remained in constant contact with Martin in the final minutes of his life.
“Any number of interested parties profited from the hoax. The railroading of George Zimmerman, for instance, helped Trayvon Martin’s biological parents shift the blame from their parenting deficiencies to a racial scapegoat. They extracted a huge settlement from a homeowners association and cashed in on book and movie deals.
“The family attorney, Benjamin Crump, got his slice of the insurance payout and forged a national identity as a civil rights champion. The old-school race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson reestablished their relevance and refreshed their cash flow. Of even greater significance, politicians like [2018 Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew] Gillum and President Barack Obama successfully exploited Trayvon Martin’s death to harvest votes and win elections; power!”
Americans “got played,” Gilbert said at the press event.
He said he believes that when “regular folks, black, white, everybody” see the film and read the companion book, they will realize that this was “another Al Sharpton race hoax.”
“We got played for no reason,” he said.
