From National Justice.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican who worked on Donald Trump’s failed 2020 campaign, has made a move that puts “woke” criminal justice crusaders to shame.
Today his office announced that it would be charging former Glynn County head prosecutor Jackie Johnson with Obstruction and Hindering a Law Enforcement Officer and Violation of Oath of Public Officer, a felony that is punished by up to five years in prison, for recusing herself from the Ahmaud Arbery case and “failing to treat Ahmaud Arbery and his family fairly and with dignity…”
Gregory McMichael and his son Travis, both white, stand accused of murdering black career criminal Ahmaud Arbery. In video taken during the incident, the McMichaels had information pointing to Arbery engaging in a rash of robberies in their town, including of a man dying from cancer, and attempted a citizen’s arrest. When they confronted Arbery. the running black man is then shown on film getting the jump on Travis McMichael, and trying to wrestle his firearm away while punching him. Arbery was shot during the struggle.
The two men acted well within Georgia’s citizen’s arrest and self-defense laws, but the national media concocted a racial narrative claiming that Arbery was only jogging and that the McMichaels could only be motivated by racism because they are white.
Following the incident, Johnson told police not to arrest the father and son until there was evidence that they committed a crime. Johnson then recused herself from prosecuting the case due to her experience working with Greg McMichael during his time as a police officer, a role he retired from in 2019.
Johnson’s supposed crime, according to Carr, was first in not ordering the immediate arrest of the McMichaels, and second when she recommended Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George E. Barnhill to handle the case in her place.
The charging affidavit claims that Johnson violated her oath of office when she chose Barnhill because she had previously asked for his advice on whether to prosecute the McMichaels. Barnhill was forced to recuse himself after he found video evidence proving that Arbery was indeed the town burglar and thus he did not believe the two white men had engaged in criminal wrongdoing.
Rather than accept the consensus of his own staff that the two white men are innocent, AG Carr was recently decided to dismiss a third prosecutor in the case.
On paper it will be difficult to prosecute the McMichaels under state law, which is why the highly political Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division and the FBI have stepped in to try the men federally with “hate crimes” and attempting to kidnap Arbery.
Unlike with similar cases such as George Zimmerman’s shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, the Republican Party and conservative media are actively helping leftist groups attack the McMichaels while hiding the trove of evidence that has come to light in the last year that vindicates them.
The race of the suspects, rather than the facts of the case, is all the press and state activists have focused on. Both defendants have been held in jail without bond since Spring 2020 as COVID restrictions threaten to push their trial fall trial date even further. The judge in the case, Timothy Walmsley, has recently ruled that Arbery’s extensive history of violent crime will not be admissible in court ini hopes of undermining their argument that they engaged in self-defense. A third man, William Bryan, is also facing charges.
Even if the McMichaels are found innocent in Georgia, they will still have to fight their federal trial, which is slated for 2022. With prosecutors being indicted for not obtaining the result politicians and anti-white activists seek, there will be enormous pressure on both the US Attorney and the judge in the case to make an imprisonable offense stick.