The Daily Caller asked Florida Republican Rep. Allen West on Capitol Hill if it’s appropriate for Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Al Sharpton to publicly protest the Trayvon Martin case.
“I don’t think anyone should be using this tragedy to push an ideological agenda, to include the anti-gun lobby,” West told TheDC.
Some civil rights leaders, such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, have been criticized by conservatives for politicizing the case.
“His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant, a former NAACP leader told TheDC on Monday.
West was also asked if he thought Martin’s parents should be participating in a Judiciary Committee briefing on racial profiling and hate crimes.
“I’ve got to tell you. This is the people’s house and so they have a right to come and bring their case,” West responded, adding that he had “no thoughts” on the case itself.
“I’m not an investigator and so I need to see, we all need to see what comes out of the investigation and let it materialize,” he told TheDC.
West had previously called the Martin shooting “an outrage” and criticized the how local police handled the investigation.
“Let’s all be appalled at this instance not because of race, but because a young American man has lost his life, seemingly, for no reason,” he said in a post on his Facebook page.