David French of National Review takes two leading Democratic presidential candidates to task.
On Friday afternoon, two of the leading contenders in the Democratic presidential primary lied. There’s no other fair way to put it. They flat-out spread fiction, libeled an innocent man, and stoked American divisions — all for political gain.
Five years ago, a Ferguson, Mo., police officer named Darren Wilson shot a young black man named Michael Brown to death after an altercation in the street. False rumors about Brown’s death — namely that he was shot in cold blood while trying to surrender with his hands in the air — ignited violent protests in Missouri and revulsion across the United States.
“Hands up, don’t shoot” became a national rallying cry — until the Obama Department of Justice comprehensively and thoroughly debunked it in a lengthy report published on March 4, 2015. Writing in December of the same year, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler called the slogan one of “the biggest Pinocchios of the year.”
But Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren ignored the Obama DOJ. They blew straight through the facts of the case. …
… The report flatly declared that Wilson “did not act with the requisite criminal intent.”
“No credible evidence” is a powerful statement, but if you read the report, it’s a powerful statement based not just on extensive forensic evidence but also on the courageous testimony of witnesses who feared reprisal for speaking the truth. One witness, a 58-year-old black male, told prosecutors that there were signs in the neighborhood that said “Snitches get stitches.” Yet he spoke the truth anyway. Other witnesses overcame their fears and spoke the truth.
How do we have confidence that they spoke the truth? Because, as the report notes, their statements “have been materially consistent, are consistent with the physical evidence, and . . . are mutually corroborative.”
