When George Zimmerman relaunched the website on Thursday, people who saw the maiden post said he attacked his lawyers over their handling of the case.
The lead attorney, Mark O’Mara, had made shutting down the website his first act as Zimmerman’s new counsel in April, having taken over for Zimmerman’s previous attorneys (he would later claim they were never really his lawyers) withdrew after losing contact with Zimmerman.
Back in April, Zimmerman launched TheRealGeorgeZimmerman.com without Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig’s knowledge. He added a PayPal account, so that he could raise money for living expenses and a potential legal defense. The 28-year-old had remained free from arrest for more than 45 days since shooting a Miami teenager, Trayvon Martin, touching off international protests. But the 28-year-old wasn’t entirely free — he remained hiding, and claims to have received death threats.
Zimmerman had been forced to leave his job, his school, and his rented townhouse inside the Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community, where he had helped start a neighborhood watch the year before, and then become its community coordinator. Then, Zimmerman’s soon-to-be former “legal advisers,” on the day they quit the case, portrayed him as “stressed out,” isolated, and seemingly increasingly desperate:
“He is largely alone. You might even say he is emotionally crippled by virtue of the pressure of this case,” Uhrig said in a media interview after quitting the case. Uhrig and Sonner said the protests and profound isolation of going into hiding may have pushed him “a little bit over the edge.
“… As of the last couple days, he has not returned phone calls, text messages or emails,” Sonner said. “He’s gone on his own. I’m not sure what he’s doing or who he’s talking to. I cannot go forward speaking to the public about George Zimmerman and this case as representing him because I’ve lost contact with him.”
Now, Zimmerman appears to have taken matters into his own hands again, relaunching his personal website, along with a Youtube account and a Twitter account, @friendsofGZ, which was deleted shortly after it was launched. On the site, Zimmerman, or someone writing on his behalf, made a fervent appeal for donations.
When he went off the grid in April, Zimmerman tried to call the special prosecutor, Angela Corey, who did not accept his calls (it’s improper for a prosecutor to talk to the target of an investigation, and Corey at that time was preparing to charge Zimmerman with second degree murder). He also reached out to Sean Hannity, with whom he had an off-the-record conversation that Hannity touted on his Fox News show.
This week, Zimmerman talked to Hannity again, in a taped interview broadcast on Fox on Wednesday. He had initially planned to talk to ABC’s Barbara Walters, but reneged after ABC refused to provide Zimmerman and his wife with a hotel room for a month. ABC does not pay for interviews. Walters later said on “The View” that Zimmerman, who she described as “desperate for money,” tried to call in to the show, but she refused to allow him on the air. Legal experts, meanwhile, are saying the interview could backfire on Zimmerman. Prosecutors have already admitted it into evidence.
O’Mara, talking to Florida reporters on the day after the Hannity interview, denied that Fox paid anything for the interview. And he tried to clear up some of the more controversial things his client said on the air, including saying that when Zimmerman said he had “no regrets” over the shooting, he really meant no regrets over cooperating with police and authorities.
And Zimmerman saying that the shooting was part of “God’s plan?” O’Mara said “that phrase is used by a lot of God fearing and God believing people to explain bad things. … I don’t think that it was his plan to say God’s plan was that Trayvon Martin had to die that night. I think that what he was tying to do with his belief in God is to simply say that like everything else that we go through in life [this] is part of god’s plan.”
O’Mara denied that there was any rift between himself and his client, or that he, like his predecessors, had lost control of George.
ThinkProgress on its Twitter account and the blog Sandra Rose reported that the initial post on the relaunched TheRealGeorgeZimmerman.com site included criticisms that seemed to be directed at O’Mara, and that dealt with fundraising, and O’Mara’s vigor in “coming to his defense.” Sandra Rose wrote:
Zimmerman (or his publicist) wrote conflicting statements on the website about his legal fund: “The skyrocketing legal costs have gone unpaid. The defense fund is at its lowest point since its inception; in fact, with outstanding expenses yet unpaid, the fund is near depletion.” [Emphasis from the original]
The page was taken down overnight.
The post that replaced it on the site makes a frank appeal for financial help from Zimmerman’s supporters:
I also want a place where people can send me words of encouragement, and while I wish I didn’t have to ask, a place for those able to donate to my defense fund. I started a defense fund to help pay my living expenses, to help with legal expenses, and help with security expenses as needed. I have had no other means of generating income for five months let alone pay the enormous expenses surrounding this case.
O’Mara on Thursday reiterated the urgency of Zimmreman’s cash needs, noting that Hannity, during his hour-long broadcast Wednesday, never identified the website or directed viewers to it. O’Mara said that since the broadcast, Zimmerman’s legal defense fund, which O’Mara took control of in April, putting it in the custody of a trustee, had taken in just “a couple thousand” dollars since the broadcast. By contrast, the legal defense fund took in $68,000 in contributions following an April 10th Hannity broadcast in which he disclosed that he had spoken to Zimmerman by phone, and more than $204,000 in the first nine days after the broadcast, according to O’Mara.
“The timing wasn’t great” for the Hannity interview, O’Mara told reporters Thursday, “but frankly, it’s out of need and necessity. George and his family and the defense fund is basically broke. He was hoping that he could highlight the new website … to get some publicity for that, quite honestly to up the funds, because they are in grave need of it.”
O’Mara said there is “no schism whatsoever” between him and his client, and he denied that he has considered withdrawing from the case. “George and I do very well,” O’Mara said. “We are one abs [sic] cohesive team.”
That said, O’Mara professed to have no personal knowledge of the operation of Zimmerman’s new website, including who is writing the posts, or taking them down.”I’m not up on that,” he said.
Note: the site TheRealGeorgeZimmerman.com was down, and returning error messages late Thursday evening.
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidreport