Dan Riehl

Breitbart’s Zimmerman Defense Team Discovers Mysterious Shadow That Proves Trayvon Martin’s Guilt

Posted by on April 1, 2012 at 2:58 pm. 9 Comments :

The Breitbrats have been striving mightily to absolve George Zimmerman of any responsibility for Trayvon Martin’s death. Most recently they have posted a video that they claim shows a wound on the back of the head of shooter George Zimmerman. It is their contention that the presence of such a wound proves that Zimmerman was the victim in a scuffle wherein Martin was the aggressor.

It is a pretty long stretch to surmise that a 140 pound teenager decided to attack an armed man twice his size, but that’s the line that the right-wing is peddling. And no one does it with more bombastic zeal than Breitbrat Dan Riehl. In his article he claims to have acquired a new hi-def video that contradicts a police video previously released by ABC News.

“A new High Definition clip from the same video appears to make clear that Zimmerman had a gash, or wound of some kind on the back of his head. That would be totally consistent with his version of events on the night in question and opposite the impression ABC News gave its viewers.”

Notice that the Breitbrats are endeavoring to corroborate Zimmerman’s story. Why conservatives have chosen to align themselves with the shooter in this incident is mind-boggling. Are they just naturally sympathetic toward gunmen who kill unarmed kids? Why wouldn’t they be concerned about the fair and proper administration of justice wherein anyone who shot another person is arrested and investigated to determine if a crime had been committed? For the trigger-happy rightists this is just a political skirmish where they get to put on a phony bravado and spew NRA cliches.

And notice also that they contradict themselves within just a few sentences. First they assert that the video “make[s] clear that Zimmerman had a gash, or wound,” then, in the same paragraph, they declare the video inconclusive. And not just inconclusive, but shoddily and unethically so:

“Given analysis by Breitbart Media and the Daily Caller already performed, the ABC video appeared to be inconclusive, at best. […] any determination beyond the video being inconclusive is shoddy, if not intentionally unethical, Journalism – if not deceptive and misleading Journalism.”

How the Breitbrats can view an inconclusive video and conclude that a wound is clear is more than a little curious. The only shoddy, unethical journalism being practiced here is by Riehl and the Breitbrats. A viewing of the video they posted reveals their deliberate attempt to distort the evidence. Consistent with their history of deceptively misrepresenting videos, the Breitbrats have selectively focused on a single frame of this video to advance their dishonest argument. However, the frames before and after the one on which they focus tell a more complete story:

Click to enlarge.
Breitbart Zimmerman Video

As is obvious from this video, there was no injury on Zimmerman’s head. That is, unless the injury would appear and disappear every few seconds. What’s more, had there actually been an injury, and it was cleaned up at the scene by paramedics as claimed by Zimmerman’s camp, why are there no bandages over the wounds? These are wounds that were described as serious, such as a broken nose and a gash that would require stitches. But according to the Breitbart’s defense team, Zimmerman’s injuries healed completely (but for an alleged bruise) by the time he arrived at the police station within an hour of the incident.

The only thing that any of the critics of the police are requesting is that the normal course of justice be taken. No one is trying Zimmerman on television or pronouncing verdicts. But any decent citizen ought to agree that the circumstances of this incident require an investigation that can only occur with an arrest and the opening of a case. But that’s something the right is dead-set against. We can only wonder why.

Breitbart Whitewashing Zimmerman, Blaming Obama For Trayvon Martin Crisis

Posted by on March 29, 2012 at 12:04 pm. 13 Comments :

The folks over at Breitbart’s joint are feverishly striving to exonerate Trayvon Martin’s shooter, George Zimmerman. Their web sites are plastered with stories that either defend Zimmerman or shift the discussion to other persons or subjects.

In one article, Breitbrat Dan Riehl makes the inane argument that ABC News was “reckless” in their decision to release a police videotape showing Zimmerman arriving at the police station for questioning. The video is significant in that it contradicts prior assertions that Zimmerman had been beaten and bloodied by Martin. There is no evidence of any injury to Zimmerman in the video.

Nevertheless, Riehl advances rebuttals that sound as if he is working for the Zimmerman legal defense team. He begins by suggesting that the video was too low quality to reveal anything conclusive. Then, contradicting himself, writes, “True, there appears to be no blood on Zimmerman’s shirt.” Then Riehl invents scenarios wherein Zimmerman was allowed by police to change his allegedly bloody clothes before arriving at the station, which would be a severe violation of procedure and ethics. What’s more, it makes no sense because a bloody shirt would be evidence of a struggle during which Zimmerman could claim to have felt threatened. Why would police suppress evidence that would have justified their decision to release Zimmerman?

Riehl’s account is blatantly biased and incoherent. And he tops it off by blasting ABC for releasing the video saying that the network “should be ashamed of its reckless highlighting of a non-story.” So apparently Riehl is of the opinion that ABC should have kept the video a secret. That’s how Breitbart’s BigJournalism practices the craft of journalism.

Another article, this time by Joel Pollak, editor of Breitbart’s BigGovernment site, seeks to tie President Obama to the Martin story. Pollak’s theory is a nearly incomprehensible mashup of Martin, Obama, and Derrick Bell, the subject of Breitbart’s failed attempt to expose the President as a college radical.

Pollak’s article is titled, “Critical Race Theory and the Trayvon Martin Case.” Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a legal/academic concept that Bell had written about and studied. It holds that there is more to racism than just the attitudes held by individuals, that it is also ingrained in society via traditional economic and judicial hierarchies. Pollak simplistically and falsely begins his narrative by defining CRT as “characterized by white supremacy–an idea Obama invoked by insisting that Americans ‘examine the laws’ that supposedly led to Martin’s death.” To be clear, Pollak is referring to the comment Obama made in response to a reporter’s question:

“I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened.

“And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together — federal, state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”

I’m not sure how any fair person could object to that. Yet that’s the statement that Pollak regards as an evocation of white supremacy. If anything, the Martin tragedy supports CRT by demonstrating the flaws in the judicial system. This is a case where after an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed, his body was tagged as a “John Doe” and tested for drugs. The shooter, on the other hand, was never tested for drugs or alcohol and was released by police with his weapon and no plans to investigate or indict him for any crime. If that isn’t reason enough to examine the laws than what on earth would be?


Pollak continues saying that Obama “waded in, playing up the racial drama,” and then remarkably writes “Obama–the center of the crisis, and to some extent its intended beneficiary.” Obama is only the center of the controversy in the warped minds of extremist, right-wing provocateurs like Pollak. And where he gets the notion that Obama was the “intended” beneficiary is beyond comprehension. If Pollak actually believes that this crisis was conceived and executed to help the President, he is seriously in need of the psychiatric attention that is now available to him thanks to ObamaCare.

Pollak closes by saying that “To speculate that Zimmerman is guilty based on the available facts is one thing; to convict him based on his supposed race, and on Martin’s, is the classic definition of “prejudice.'” However, the people protesting the handling of this affair are not convicting Zimmerman of anything. They are merely demanding that the ordinary process of justice be observed.

Ordinarily after a shooting there is an arrest and an investigation, which could lead to a trial if the evidence warrants. But the Breitbrats are all fired up to whitewash this crime and sweep it under their racist rug. They load up their web sites with tangential stories about celebrity Tweets, and over-zealous protesters, and bogus accusations of media bias, and absurd connections to a conspiratorial White House that must have planned the whole thing.

All I can say is that it’s a damn good thing that Breitbart wasn’t around when Martin Luther King was assassinated. They would surely have defended James Earl Ray and blamed the whole thing on President Johnson.