On Tuesday’s broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said it would be a major mistake for Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department to pursue legal action against George Zimmerman.
Watch:
“Is there any evidence, whatsoever, of racial animus or bias in the actual trial itself. If anything, the trial judge had some sympathy. I think a little more sympathy for the prosecution. So, nobody who — it was not in secret, it was open for the whole world to see. So, there is no case to be made, that this was an unfair process. We have the divine justice and human. And the best that we can do is what our system has. It has worked for two centuries. You have a presentation of the evidence on both sides and a verdict. And to the president’s credit, he did say in his initial statement, ‘A jury has spoken.’ The only question is, will the mob that caused the trial in the first place now pressure the administration into a double-jeopardy prosecution of Zimmerman either on grounds of hate crime or civil rights. I think it will be a terrible mistake if the Department of Justice did. And I think that would be a success for the mob.”
He said that, despite whatever political gains are made by going after Zimmerman, Holder would lose badly in court.
“Listening to what [Holder] said today at the NAACP Convention, I think he understands the politics and realities of this,” Krauthammer said. “The legal realities of it, if he brings a federal case, he is not just going to lose but he will be humiliated. And I think he knows that. And that’s why his speech today was very interesting. He deflected the issue of prosecuting Zimmerman. He spoke about investigating, which is a way of actually being able to delay this process until the temperature in the room has been lowered.”
According to Krauthammer, the activists pushing for the continued prosecution Zimmerman ignore the progress the United States has made on racial issues.
“I understand it,” he said. “I have some sympathy for it. I can understand, if you get stopped — you know, Holder spoke about an incident he was already a federal prosecutor, when he was stopped in Georgetown because he was running on his way to a movie because he was late. So, I understand that. But, I think, if you look at the facts, you look at this in comparison with almost any society on Earth, if you look at the progress we made over 60 years, that, I think, is not an accurate perception. And I think that it is played upon by racial activists I think is not an accurate perception. And I think it is played upon by racial activists like the Sharptons and others, and the media who want a story. And that’s why I think it has a lot of prominence in the country. But I do — and I don’t think it was a play in this case. It was a fair trial. Everybody heard the evidence, nothing was hidden, and the jury spoke.”