Robert Zimmerman blasts ‘liberal media’, calls racially incendiary tweets an ‘error in judgment’

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While Jackson said Robert Zimmerman’s comments and sentiments are not evidence in the case, his racially-tinged statements are reminiscent of statements by another Zimmerman family member, known publicly as Witness 9; a cousin of Zimmerman’s who alleged in statements to Sanford, Florida police that Zimmerman and members of his family harbor negative views about African-Americans.

Robert Zimmerman’s tweets “back up Witness 9’s statements,” Jackson said. “This is not about whether Robert Zimmerman is a racist or about what he said, and I really don’t care whether Robert Zimmerman is a racist or what he said. All we care about is the evidence that will prove that George Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin and killed him.”

In a phone call that Witness 9 placed to police two days after the shooting last year, Witness 9 said of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin: “I don’t know what happened, I don’t know at all who this kid was, or anything else but I know George. And I know that he does not like black people and he would start something. He’s a very confrontational person.”  She added: “it’s in his blood. We’ll just say that, and I don’t want this, this poor kid and their family to just be overlooked.”

“I don’t talk to him because of the the things that he says … the person he is … the things that he does,” she added. “I know his mother, I know everybody and they’re all the same way, and I hate that. They’re just mean and [they’re] open about it.”

In a later interview with prosecutors, Witness 9 said she made the phone call because she was “afraid that he may have done something because the kid was black,” adding that when the two of them were growing up, Zimmerman “and his family have always made statements that they don’t like black people if they don’t act like white people. They like black people if they act white, and other than that they talk a lot of … a lot of bad things about black people.” Asked to whom she was referring, the woman answered George Zimmerman, “his brother, his sister, his mom, his dad.” Witness 9 told prosecutors she couldn’t recall George Zimmerman ever taking specific action that she could determine was because of race.

Former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Kendall Coffey thinks it’s highly unlikely that Robert Zimmerman’s statements would make it into George Zimmerman’s trial. But he said the Twitter rant could harm the younger Zimmerman’s case “in the court of public opinion.

Regarding Robert Zimmerman, Coffey called it “baffling that he’s operating as this unguided missile, because it can only be harmful to Zimmerman. Maybe the family isn’t close enough for them to say ‘stay home, shut up.’ But you’d think with the consequences his brother’s facing he’d have some concern.”

Coffey said Zimmerman’s defense had been gaining some traction with evidence released of Zimmerman’s injuries on the night of the shooting, and that Robert Zimmerman’s statements could set the defense back with the public.

“Because [while] judges will do everything they can to reduce pretrial publicity, but if it’s out there that Robert Zimmerman is out there making racist comments, that certainly is going to raise the cloud in some people about what kinds of attitudes were inside the Zimmerman home. It’s certainly the last thing the Zimmerman defense needs,” he said.

Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @TheReidReport.