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May 10, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:39
THE TRUTH ABOUT AHMAUD ARBERY
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Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
This is the truth about Ahmaud Arbery, the victim of a terrible killing that occurred in February in Georgia, for which, just this last Wednesday, two men, a father and a son, have been arrested in connection with.
Was it a vigilante action?
Or was it self-defense?
Let's cut through the rhetoric and get to the facts, and I will tell you what really happened, in my view, according to the facts and evidence.
So let's look at the mainstream narrative Which is generating great sympathy, which I completely understand.
This is from the New York Times by Charles Blow.
The killing of Ahmaud Arbery, another black man falsely assumed to be a criminal, is dead.
And here's a picture you've probably seen, this handsome young fellow smiling into the camera.
And the article starts, the video is short and shocking.
It's taken from the perspective of a vehicle following a young black man running at a jogger's pace.
The jogger is 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.
Arbery approaches a pickup truck parked in the street.
There are two white men, one outside the vehicle with a shotgun, 34-year-old Travis McMichael, and the other, his father, 64-year-old Gregory McMichael, standing aloft in the flatbed.
The McMichaels had reportedly chased Arbery, blocking his path at another location, at which point he had turned around and jogged another way to avoid them.
In the video, when the men encounter each other, there's immediately an altercation.
Arbery and the younger McMichael fight for control of the shotgun.
Shots are fired. Arbery tries to run away, but he is clearly wounded and his knees buckle.
He collapses to the ground.
The video ends. After Arbery fell, the younger McMichael rolled over the limp body to see if the male had a weapon.
According to a police report, there was blood on McMichael's hands when the police arrived.
Arbery died of his wounds.
Terrible, terrible stuff.
The NAACP put out an action alert from Georgia.
Ahmaud Arbery was running in his neighborhood and was chased and murdered by two white supremacists.
Contacted the Liberty County District Attorney to demand that Gregory and Travis McMichael be charged for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.
I'm not sure that this kind of racial profiling really helps the situation.
I don't see any evidence. I've not seen any evidence that they are white supremacists.
Celebrities, of course, particularly sports celebrities, I'm sorry, Ahmad. Rest in paradise. And my prayers and blessings sent to the...
Continued... Another person said, reality.
Hate to see it. Some won't speak, but they'll lose the endorsements they hold so dearly.
This is not okay. How do I explain, says another celebrity, what happened to Ahmaud Arbery, to my six-year-old son?
The violence needs to stop, another tweet.
The profiling and racial injustice needs to stop.
Hashtag Ahmaud Arbery.
And the picture, of course...
Of the young man and the caption, I was murdered by an armed father and son who hunted me down and shot me as I jogged in a Georgia neighborhood.
Neither of my killers have been charged.
My name is Ahmaud Arbery.
Now, of course, this has been changed.
Now the men have been charged.
So more senselessness video is heartbreaking.
How many more mothers will have to bury their sons and daughters?
Answers needed. So, a lot of tension, a lot of frustration.
I completely understand it from this perspective.
So let's look at the people involved.
This is Gregory and Travis McMichael.
You've seen this picture, I'm sure, looking like the kind of stereotypical good old boys' deliverance style in their khakis and baseball caps and squatting over a dead pig.
You've seen their mugshots, I'm sure, down on the bottom with regards to Ahmaud Arbery.
It's a nice picture, usually, of him in a tuxedo.
The alleged picture on the bottom right of his mugshot, not so commonly seen.
So let's talk about...
What happened? So, Arbery was shot and killed February 23rd, Southeast Georgia.
So, the video has just been released.
I'm not going to include it here.
I'll do a follow-up, I'm sure.
So, what happened was a neighbor called 911 reporting that a black man in a white t-shirt was inside a house that was partially under construction and partially closed in.
Now that's not jogging behavior.
So he wasn't out jogging.
Nobody called the police because he was jogging.
They called the police, or they called 911 because he was inside, illegally inside a house that was partially under construction and partially closed in.
So this is a picture of the house here.
You can't see there's a little porta potty, which is probably how he knew that the house was under construction, a little porta potty on the front lawn.
But he goes in. He spends, I don't know, four minutes or so inside the house.
He comes out and runs, maybe because he heard or saw the man calling 911, but he hoofs it, man.
He just goes fast.
Now, it's reported as shoplifting.
I've also read that it was a television, but...
The question of motive is important here, right?
And we'll get to this as we go forward.
So the history is that Ahmaud Arbery stole a television in 2018, which was a violation of the probation that he was under from 2013 when he was indicted on charges that he had brought a gun to a high school basketball game, which is, of course, a terrible thing to do.
And he fled. He threw the gun away or hid the gun.
They found it under a sandwich board, I think.
An officer fractured his hand in hot pursuit.
He was charged with a variety of things.
But as a first offender, he got five years probation, but then he violated the probation with shoplifting.
It appears to be a television, could be something else.
And so this is really, really important as to motive, which I'll get to in a few minutes.
Now, the video has just been released.
According to officials, there is video footage of a man matching Aubrey's description burglarizing a home.
Now, I don't know if the video that I watched of him going into this home is the same as him burglarizing a home, but we shall find out as we go forward.
The theory, of course, is that if he was a thief, then he may have gone into this house to look for a hammer.
There's some evidence that he had a hammer in the altercation with the younger man.
McMichael. And so, was he in there looking for tools with a bridge to burglarize?
We don't know. We'll probably find out again over the course of the trial.
Now, this is under contention.
Some people say there was a string of recent burglaries and auto break-ins in the neighborhood where Arboretta is running.
Some people say there was just one and another one that was unreported.
Again, we'll find out as we go along.
On the day of the shooting, there were several 911 calls reporting a suspect matching Arboretta's description looking into houses.
So again, Was he out there just jogging?
Was he shot for jogging?
Did people call the police because a young guy was jogging while black?
Well, no. They were called because he went into this house.
And this matters to motive as we go forward.
So let's drop into the 911 calls, February 23rd, 2020.
Dispatcher, to the guy who sees Aubrey going into the house we just looked at, and you said someone is breaking into it right now?
No, it's all open, says the caller.
It's under construction, and he's running right now.
Here he goes, right now.
Dispatcher says, okay, what is he doing?
Caller, he's running down the street.
And then there's some garbled stuff that's hard to hear at 1.9 when one dispatcher says, that's fine, I'll get the police out there, I just need to know what he was doing wrong.
Because if the police are going out, they need to know...
What was done wrong so that they can prepare themselves for the level of danger that they might be facing.
So, the father, Gregory McMichael, is standing in his front yard when he sees Aubrey hauling ass, as he puts it, down the street.
So, he's near his neighbor.
He's next to his neighbor. I think he can see the house that Aubrey was in.
Aubrey is then running down the street.
Now, Then is where the disaster begins.
Gregory McMichael and his son Travis got guns, got in a truck, and followed Arbery.
So, the police report states that prior to parking their truck, as the violence erupted around the parked truck, the McMichaels had shouted for Arbery to stop and answer questions multiple times but were ignored.
So what happened? They parked their truck, Aubrey ran around the passenger side of the truck, then crosses in front and directly charges Travis McMichael, who was holding a shotgun, Ahmaud Arbery punches Travis McMichael several times and is himself shot several times.
Very, very important. No shots were fired until after Arbery attacked, right?
So, come on, look, if you want to go and shoot someone, you're just going to do a drive-by, you're going to shoot him, you're going to peel off.
You're not going to sit there, park your car, and wait to shoot him until he's grappling with you for your shotgun.
That's simply not how any kind of murder would work.
And no shots were fired until after Arbery attacked.
And there's a little picture down here, sweet jogging boots, obviously kind of sarcastic.
You can see, I don't know, could be a shadow, could be any number of things.
We'll find out over the course of the investigation.
They don't particularly look like running shoes to me.
They look a little bit more like construction boots or maybe boat shoes with a high heel.
Oh, is there a high ankle? I don't know.
But they don't look specifically like...
I have a little bit of experience with this because I was a runner for quite some time when I was younger, a cross-country team, long-distance team.
I used to run sort of 15, 20 miles occasionally.
And you've got to aim for comfort.
You've got to have your water. All right.
So let's look at the police report.
It goes like this. On Sunday, February 23rd, 2020, I responded to the intersection of Satilla Drive and Holmes Drive in reference to shots fired.
While en route, or in route, I was advised there were shots fired and a male on the ground bleeding out.
A short time later, I was advised the male on the ground was deceased.
Upon my arrival, I observed Officer Minshew setting up a perimeter.
I began speaking with Gregory McMichael, who was a witness to the incident.
McMichael stated there have been several break-ins in the neighborhood and further the suspect was caught on surveillance video.
McMichael stated he was in his front yard and saw the suspect from the break-ins hauling us down Satilla Drive towards Burford Drive.
McMichael stated he then ran inside his house and called to Travis McMichael and said, Travis, the guy is running down the street.
Let's go. McMichael stated he went to his bedroom and grabbed his.357 Magnum and Travis grabbed his shotgun because, quote, they didn't know if the male was armed or not.
McMichael stated, quote, the other night, end quote, they saw the same male, and he stuck his hand down his pants, which led them to believe the male was armed.
McMichael stated he and Travis got in the truck and drove down Satilla Drive towards Burford Drive.
McMichael stated when they arrived at the intersection of Satilla Drive and Holmes Drive, they saw the unidentified male running down Burford Drive.
McMichael then stated Travis drive down Burford and attempted to cut off the male.
McMichael stated the unidentified male turned around and began running back The direction from which he came and Roddy attempted to block him, which was unsuccessful.
McMichael stated he then jumped into the bed of the truck and he and Travis continued to Holmes in an attempt to intercept him.
McMichael stated they saw the unidentified male and shouted, stop, stop, we want to talk to you.
McMichael stated they pulled up beside the male and shouted stop again, at which time Travis exited the truck with the shotgun.
McMichael stated the unidentified male began to violently attack Travis and the two men then started fighting over the shotgun, at which point Travis fired a shot.
And then a second later, there was a second shot.
McMichael stated the male fell face down on the pavement with his hand under his body.
McMichael stated he rolled the man over to see if the male had a weapon.
So I'm not going to show this video, of course.
You can find it online.
But this is what's happening.
So I've got two circles on the screen here.
The one circle is the truck that is parked.
The second is Arbery.
Running down the street. Again, it's hard to tell exactly how far, 20, 30 feet or so on, maybe 40 feet.
He's running down the street towards the parked truck.
Now, of course, if he felt like he was in grave danger, I'm not sure why he would be running towards the truck.
Unless there's another reason which I'll get to.
So, let's talk about the district attorney.
Okay, there's been a couple that have kind of come and gone for various reasons, conflict of interest.
Jackie Johnson is the district attorney for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit.
She recused her office. As Gregory McMichael, one of the men involved in the shooting, was a former investigator in her office.
I've seen him referred to as an ex-cop, as an ex-detective, and as a former investigator.
So, let's just say he's nose-deep in...
In street law, right?
I mean, the law that occurs and matters when you're out there on the street dealing with people in real time rather than, you know, courtroom law and so on.
So the guy knew. He was, I think, mid-80s was when he started.
So he had decades of experience, multi-decades of experience in street law.
And this is really, really important when it comes to the citizen's arrest question.
So, George Barnhill is the district attorney in Waycross, and he sent the following letter to the Glynn County Police Chief sometime in April.
He recused himself from the investigation shortly after sending the letter because of another conflict of interest involving his son.
I have slimmed down this letter a little bit, I guess unlike his chin, and let's say he says, I am the current elected district attorney for the Waycross Circuit.
I have worked as a criminal prosecutor for some 36 years.
As an assistant district attorney in Waycross and Brunswick, as chief assistant in Waycross for 20 years, and served as the district attorney the last five years, I have been actively involved in over 100 We're good to go.
What are those points?
I'll tell you.
He says, as to the case at hand, Arbery, it is my professional belief the autopsy confirms what we had already viewed as shown in the videotape, with the photographs and from the witness statements taken immediately at the scene.
The autopsy supports the initial opinion we gave you on February 24th, 2020, right, day after, at the briefing room in the Glynn County Police Department, after reviewing the evidence you had at that time.
We do not see grounds for an arrest of any of the three parties, right?
The elder and the younger McMichael and the man who was filming, who was driving behind.
So why? Why?
Well... He said, It appears Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael, and Brian William were following in pursuit, burglary suspect, with solid first-hand probable cause in their neighborhood and asking slash telling him to stop.
It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived.
Under Georgia law, this is perfectly legal.
Citizen's arrest, perfectly legal.
Now, let's look at this statute.
A private person, it says, may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge.
If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion.
So there are lots of two-bit internet pseudo-lawyers out there who are trying to figure out, well, what constitutes immediate knowledge?
Did he see something yesterday?
Did he witness what was going on with the house that was under construction?
Did he hear his neighbor? Did his neighbor tell him?
Look, this guy, right?
Greg. Was a multi-decade veteran of the force.
He knew the law. He knew what was possible.
He knew what was allowable.
He was confirmed by this district attorney.
He was confirmed by senior lawyer, at least one senior lawyer.
So the idea that you're just going to read this and say, well, that doesn't count, that doesn't apply.
I think I'm basically going to go with probably, well, well north of half a century of experience of these people looking at what happened rather than someone who just says, well, I don't think it applies because I'm on the internet and I'm emotionally reactive.
But here's the thing, too.
Because this debate is going on and on, does the citizens arrest?
Is it valid? Was it right?
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Let's say that the knowledge that Greg McMichael had as a former cop, former investigator, former detective, whatever the heck he was, let's say that he believed he had a good and just cause for a citizen's arrest.
Let's say that he was wrong. That still doesn't give Arbery the right to attack Travis McMichael Try and take his gun in order to kill Travis and Greg McMichael.
I mean, that's why you take people's guns, right?
To turn the guns on them.
So it doesn't matter whether it was valid or not.
Let's say that a police officer comes to arrest you, and you don't think that the arrest is valid.
Do you get to try and wrestle the gun away from the cop?
Like you're in some sort of Ava Maxx song?
Of course not. Of course not.
Just because you think something is legally illegitimate does not give you the right to grab people's guns with, we assume, the intent of shooting them.
If you grab a gun owner's gun, you've just given him permission to use deadly force to protect himself and not be prosecuted, certainly not in Georgia, at least not without massive public pressure.
To the contrary. So that's important.
They had a lot of knowledge, and even if it was invalid, the citizen's arrest, you don't deal with that by grabbing people's guns.
DA goes on to say, It clearly appears Travis McMichael and Greg McMichael had firearms being carried in an open fashion.
The investigation shows neither of them to be convicted felons or under felony supervision.
They were in a motor vehicle owned by Travis McMichael under Georgia law.
This is legal, open, carry.
And you can look at the statutes more yourself if you want to pause.
So, it was legal for them to attempt a citizen's arrest.
It was legal for them to have guns.
So, so far, legal.
The DA continues.
The video made by William Bryan clearly shows a shooting in real time.
From said video, it appears Ahmaud Arbery was running along the right side of the McMichael truck, then abruptly turns 90 degrees to the left and attacks Travis McMichael, who was standing at the front left corner of the truck.
A brief skirmish ensues, in which it appears Arbery strikes McMichael and appears to grab the shotgun and pull it from McMichael.
The shot is through Arbery's right arm.
Hand palm, which is consistent with him grabbing and pulling the shotgun at the barrel tip.
The second and third wounds are consistent with the struggle for the shotgun as depicted in the video.
The angle of the second shot with the rear of the buttstock being pushed away and down from the fight are also consistent with the upward angle of the blood plume shown in the video and that McMichael was attempting to push the gun away from Arbery while Arbery was pulling it toward himself.
The third shot, too, appears to be in a struggle over the gun.
The angle of the shots and the video show this was from the beginning, or almost immediately became a fight over the shotgun.
Given the fact Arbery initiated the fight, at the point Arbery grabbed the shotgun under Georgia law, McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself.
And this is what's so frustrating when hearing everybody opine about this stuff.
Aubrey was not killed because he was black.
He was not killed because he was jogging.
He's not killed because he was in a whitish neighborhood.
He wasn't killed for any of those reasons.
He was killed because he tried to grab a shotgun and wrestle a shotgun and punch a man against the law.
Now people say, ah yes, but you see, Aubrey was scared.
He was alarmed. He was nervous.
So what? Do we really want to live in a society where you can beat the hell out of people, grab their guns, try to kill them perhaps, and just say, well, I did it because I was scared, so it's fine, right?
I mean, come on. I say this in brotherly appeal to black community leaders, white community leaders, every kind of community leader.
Do we want a situation where somebody says, oh, I beat up that black guy because he scared me.
He looked at me funny. I was alarmed.
We don't want to live in that kind of world.
We really don't. So the fact that he may have been alarmed, By these two men does not give him the right to viciously attack and try to grab the gun away from one of the men.
Nuh-uh. No, no, no, no, no.
That's not right. So he finishes up the DA. Just as importantly, while we know McMichael had his finger on the trigger, we do not know who caused the firings.
Arbery would only have to pull the shotgun approximately one-sixteenth to one-eighth of one inch to fire the weapon himself, and in the height of an altercation, this is entirely possible.
Arbery's mental health records and prior convictions help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible thought pattern to attack an armed man.
It's really, really important.
Like, if you're grabbing at a gun, like, if you've got your finger on a trigger and somebody pulls your...
Hand, pulls your forearm, pulls the gun, it can shoot, even though you're not pulling the trigger, right?
So nobody even knows who shot.
And the video's so blurry, and I doubt anyone remembers, but that's the reality, right?
So this is the statute, Use of Force in Defense.
Once confronted with a deadly force situation, an individual is allowed to use deadly force to defend themselves or others.
There's a no duty to retreat law in Georgia, just as there's no hate crime law.
An individual is not required to back away from or submit to an attack.
And the use of force, another statute, which is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to prevent trespass on or other tortious or criminal interference with real property other than a habitation or personal property is not justified unless the person using such force reasonably believes that it is necessary to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
And, most importantly, perhaps, a person properly and legally defending themselves is immune from prosecution.
And there was video.
And in the video, no guns are being pointed at Maude Arbery.
It is perfectly legal to drive down the street, stick your head out the window and say, hey, stop, I want to talk to you.
It's perfectly legal to say, I'm making a citizen's arrest.
You need to stop. The police are on their way right now.
All of that is perfectly legal.
They say, oh, they were hunting him down, they were chasing him.
This is all just rhetoric. The question is, what is legal?
Is it legal to tell someone you want to talk to them?
Of course, that happens all the time. You walk down the street and people say, hey, I want to sell you something, or will you sign my petition, or I want you to sign up for my charity.
It happens all the time. You don't get to attack people because they say they want to talk to you, they want to ask you questions.
But there's another reason, I think, which we'll get to.
The DA concludes, for the above and foregoing reasons, it is our conclusion there is insufficient probable cause to issue arrest warrants at this time.
As to any further issues on whether to present this to a Glynn County Grand Jury, that will have to wait for the next District Attorney's review.
Please consider this an open file until that decision is made and restrict the release of any information under Georgia Open Records Act requests.
Sincerely, Georgie Barnhill, blah, blah, blah.
Now, in a separate document, District Attorney Barnhill reports that video exists of Mr.
Arbery, quote, burglarizing a home immediately preceding the chase and confrontation.
And I assume that is him going into the house that is under construction, almost finished, and so on.
And that video has now been released.
And this is from News 1.
Quote, Barnhill eventually left the case along with another prosecutor, Jackie Johnson, before him.
Gregory McMichael used to work in Johnson's district attorney office in the Brunswick Judicial District, so there was a conflict of interest.
Aubrey's mom, Wanda Cooper, urged Barnhill to recuse himself from the case after it was revealed that his son also works in Johnson's office where Greg used to work as an investigator since 1985.
So, let's look at the path to the attack.
So here you can see on the right-hand side of the screen, the video is parked on the right of the road.
You can see Travis, he has a shotgun, which I think you kind of legally have to...
You can't hide the shotgun like Matrix-style in a long coat or anything.
You have to show the shotgun, so he's out there with a shotgun.
And Ahmaud Arbery runs up to the truck, runs towards the truck for quite some time, fairly leisurely paced.
And then what he does is he runs up towards the truck...
And he runs to the right of the truck.
And you can sort of see in the bottom right here, he's running around the truck.
Again, fairly leisurely pace.
And then what happens is, when he gets to the front of the truck, sort of where the right headlight is, he then darts or lunges around the front of the truck and attacks the younger Mr.
McMichael. And the shotgun fires three times, shooting Aubrey through the hand and then killing him.
Now, Aubrey knew that there was a car behind him.
I assumed that he'd been told that the police had been called, were on their way, and they were just trying to detain him on a citizen's arrest situation.
So he knew there was at least one witness.
Of course, people are coming out of their houses, I'm sure, and maybe grabbing their cell phones to film and so on.
You know, if people have said the police are on their way, it's really hard to imagine that they're there to kill you because the police are on their way.
It's very rare, if not impossible, to imagine that a murderer would call the police to show up to make sure they caught him.
Now, even if he attacks, which he did, of course, he attacks Travis McMichael, there is the elder McMichael on the flatbed of the truck.
And so even if he'd taken out Travis, he would have been shot then by the older man in the flatbed of the truck.
Now, the other thing, too, again, it's hard to imagine that Ahmaud Arbery even knew that these men were armed because they're in the car, right?
In the car, if you've got a hip holster, then you can't see that over the...
The car window, you can't see that.
And there's no evidence, of course, that they pointed any weapons at him, because that's illegal.
You can't point weapons at people.
You can open carry, but you can't point weapons at people.
So there's no evidence that he even knew they were armed, let alone that they pointed any weapons at him.
So I guess he figured out when he was jogging up that the guy had a shotgun, and he's like, oh, I guess I'll use that to take these guys out.
Again, the question is to motive.
Like, why would he do such a thing?
Why would he do such a suicidal thing as attack and try and get a hold of a weapon?
I have a theory. I have a theory.
It does accord with the facts. I'm not going to say it's conclusively proven, but I will tell you shortly.
So here we go. This, to me, is the key to the whole mystery as to motivation.
This is from The Star from May 7th.
This was Thursdays, two days ago, as of this recording.
Georgia Shooter's father, previously investigated victim, Ahmaud Arbery.
Here we go. Greg McMichael, who provided gun cover for his son as he fought and eventually shot a young black jogger.
Again, you've got to watch this language.
He was not jogging.
He was attacking.
Anyway, Greg Michael may have known the victim long before their encounter in a subdivision just south of Brunswick, Georgia.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.
Here we go. In his letter of recusal to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, Roger Barnhill, the guy we just heard from, wrote that his son, a prosecutor in the Brunswick DA's office, and McMichael, then an investigator in that same office, both helped with the previous prosecution of Ahmaud Arbery.
McMichael, a former Glynn County cop, told Glynn police he recognized Arbery from the surveillance video that captured a recent burglary in his mostly white neighborhood.
He said he planned to make a citizen's arrest.
So here we say, when he was in high school, I think he was 19, though.
When he was in high school, Arbery was sentenced to five years probation as a first offender on charges of carrying a weapon on campus and several counts of obstructing a law enforcement officer.
He was convicted of probation violation in 2018 after he was charged with shoplifting court documents show.
So, this to me is the key.
The key to the whole thing.
And I'll tell you why in a sec.
So, as we know, of course, just on Wednesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reported that Gregory McMichael, a former law enforcement official, and his son, Travis McMichael, were arrested in connection with the February 23rd shooting of Ahmaud Arbery.
This, of course, occurred 74 days after the killing.
I'll get to my conclusions in a second, but let's just ask ourselves this basic question.
So two guys chase you down and step in front of you with their arms.
They tell you to stop running.
The police are on their way. What should you do?
A. Wait until the police arrive.
B. Ignore them.
Continue running. C. Call the cops yourself.
D. Attempt to come to a peaceful resolution.
Start a dialogue. Or E. Attack.
Try to grab one of their guns and proceed to kill them both before the other person can shoot you.
I think we all know the more reasonable answer to that, which then comes to the question of what was Ahmad thinking?
What was going through his mind?
Of course, we don't know at this point, and we'll never know.
But there's reason to believe that we can know, based upon...
The relationship that we just talked about.
Okay, a couple of comments and then I'll tell you what I think happened according to reason and evidence.
So, with regards to this horrific encounter, we have to divide the sequences into the legal and the illegal, just as we did with Michael Brown and Darren Wilson, just as we did with George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin.
What is legal and what is illegal?
It is legal to drive down the road and demand that someone stop.
It is legal to make a citizen's arrest.
It is legal to be armed while doing so.
And certainly, Gregory McMichael knew the law deeply and well at this point.
He had been a cop, an investigator, a detective for many decades.
Now, the idea that Ahmaud Arbery was unarmed is false.
Listen. When you're grabbing at someone's gun and trying to use it to shoot them with and shoot their father with, you're no longer unarmed.
He was not unarmed.
He was grappling for a weapon and he may very well have shot the weapon himself.
He was not unarmed.
And to say that he was unarmed when he is grappling at a weapon is just inaccurate and inflammatory and wrong.
Now, when people say, oh, the police are on their way, it's a citizen's arrest, you're safe.
You may be in trouble, but you're safe.
Now, the thing also that troubles me about this so much is that the justice system itself failed.
Because this young man, right, Ahmaud Arbery, had been in a school basketball game with a gun.
He'd run. He got five years probation.
He'd violated his probation by stealing and nothing happened to him because there are these reports of his mental illnesses or mental issues and so on, which are kind of contradicted by other people and so on, but nothing happened to them.
So... Why was it so important for Gregory and Travis McMichael to grab their weapons before going to perform the citizen's arrest on Ahmaud Arbery?
Well, because Gregory McMichael had been part of the investigation into Ahmaud Arbery in the past, which means he knew everything about the young man.
He knew about his history, his weapons charges, he knew about the shoplifting, he knew about the violation of probation.
And therefore he knew that the young man could be armed and dangerous since he'd had a weapons charge in the past.
Now... If Ahmaud Arbery was out there for purposes of theft, and again, we'll find this out perhaps as the investigation goes forward, as the trial goes forward, but if he was out there, if he had a hammer on him, if he had gone into this largely empty building or empty building in order to get a hammer, if he's on video scoping out houses and so on, and if, of course, he had been seen going into the almost completed house illegally, then he was in significant trouble.
He was in significant trouble.
Now, I want you to picture this.
Ahmaud Arbery comes out of the house that he went into for reasons unknown, illegally, and someone's on the phone saying, stop, or the police are coming, or I've called the police, or he knows someone's calling to 911, he can hear the conversation, and he's like, oh man, I'm busted, and he runs.
Now, If he was in there, it's like, oh man, I really had to use the bathroom and this place was available, although I guess he could have gone to the port-a-potty out front.
He could have explained something, could have sat there, could have waited, something could have happened, but instead he ran.
Okay, now, if you are an investigator with the police, it is very common for you to engage in conversations with the suspect.
Now, I've looked this up, and it seems to be fairly standard.
You've got to ask questions.
You've got to get their side of the story.
You've got to confront them with evidence and so on, right?
So if this is the case, then Gregory McMichael had sat across the table in the past, perhaps a year and a half, two years before, in 2018, had sat across the table from Ahmaud Arbery during the investigation into the shoplifting.
And he would have known all about the 2013 guns charge.
In which case, you understand, this is not two strangers.
These are two people who've sat across from each other in a highly confrontational and highly charged legal and police setting.
Now, Gregory McMichael may have been listening to the police scanner.
He may have been listening to his neighbor.
And he looks out and the guy who got away, right?
Because he was not, he didn't suffer any repercussions that I can tell for violating his probation in 2018 with the shoplifting.
So Ahmaud Arbery is running past his house and he's like, oh man.
He was just in that house illegally.
This guy who got away, he's not getting away this time.
This guy who got away last time, and cops kind of hold on to this stuff.
You know, there are cops who work cold cases years after they retire.
It bothers them. There's always the one that got away.
So Gregory McMichael sees Ahmaud Arbery, booting down the street, and he's like, not this time.
No, you are not getting away this time.
Now I've got you. Couldn't get you in 2018.
Got you now. Right or wrong.
Now, whether it's because he's running past Gregory McMichael or sometime later, Ahmaud Arbery looks up and sees, as he's running away, the face of the investigator who sat across him in the police station and cross-examined him or gave him evidence or ostracized the story or took notes or interviewed him in some manner.
And he's like, oh, man, what are the odds?
What are the odds that I run out of a house I'm in illegally illegally?
With maybe incriminating stuff upon my person, and who do I see right there?
The investigator from the police station.
So then he runs.
But, of course, as he runs, he's calculating.
And what's he calculating? Well, he's calculating that he's screwed.
Because now he's not just some guy running down the street that maybe later someone will try and pick out of a lineup while he was running past, scrunching up his face maybe.
Now he's looked into the eyes of a guy who knows, Gregory McMichael, who knows exactly who he, Ahmaud Arbery, is.
So there's nowhere to run now.
There's no escape. And this is strike three, right?
2013, gun.
2018, shoplifting.
2020, well, trespassing, burglary, who knows, right?
So, Ahmaud Arbery is running, thinking, I can't run.
What can I run for? The guy knows exactly who I am.
One phone call, boop, here they come, right?
Now, maybe he doesn't see Gregory McMichael as he boots past him, as Gregory McMichael is on the lawn watching him go.
Maybe he's just running, doesn't even see.
But I'll tell you where for sure Ahmaud Arbery is going to see the face of Gregory McMichael who investigated him.
We know from the video that it was the son, it was Travis, who was driving the truck, which means that his father, Gregory, was in the passenger side.
Now, if Ahmaud Arbery is running along the side of the street, right-hand side of the street, what happens?
You pull up, and it's not the driver who talks to him, it's the passenger.
So Gregory McMichael rolls down the window, sticks his hat out, and says to Ahmaud Arbery, Stop.
Stop. We want to talk to you.
And then, at that point, Ahmaud Arbery looks into the face of a cop who knows him and knows his history, and he was going to put him into jail.
There's nowhere to run to, because it's incomprehensible.
Why would he run towards the truck if he fears the people in it so much?
Why wouldn't he run the other way? Why wouldn't he jump over some fences?
There's tons of places for him to go, but he runs straight towards the truck.
Why? Because he's not going to jail, he says to himself.
He's going to take the biggest gamble there is, try and get a weapon, try and shoot them maybe, disable them, get away.
There's nowhere to run because he's been made.
Gregory McMichael knows exactly who he is and he knows who Gregory McMichael is and that's why he made the decision, I believe, To literally run up to the truck, run past the truck, and then dart left and attack Travis McMichael with the goal of getting the weapon in order to kill both men so that he could escape with no witnesses.
There were no witnesses who knew who he was because he's been made.
He's been made.
He's been identified.
That's what makes sense.
It's a bad decision, obviously.
But that accords with the facts.
Now, please understand, this is a theory.
I'm not a lawyer. I don't have access to this kind of direct evidence.
It will perhaps come out during the trial.
But even if Ahmaud Arbery had never met Gregory McMichael, but Gregory McMichael had studied Ahmaud Arbery for the causes of investigation...
It's entirely possible that Gregory McMichael said, Oh, your name is Ahmaud Arbery.
I know where you are.
I know your history. You're going to jail this time.
This is a citizen's arrest.
Stop. So I believe that they knew each other.
Investigators routinely meet with suspects.
And that's what happened.
That's how it went down. That's why Ahmaud Arbery attacked, because there was nowhere to run.
And because he couldn't run, and he didn't want to go to jail, he tried to fight, and he lost, and it's tragic.
And I think that this has a lot to do with institutionalized failure, because if the justice system had dealt with Ahmaud Arbery when he violated probation, then this would not have happened.
But again, these are all causes.
So, We've got to stop doing this kind of stuff.
I mean, I know it's an election year, at which point the mainstream media is going to try and whip up all this race hatred and all of this animosity and hostility and the white supremacists.
Come on. We've got to stop doing this stuff.
We're all living in the same society, in the same world.
We have got to find a way...
Where we can join arms and face the facts and face the truth rather than face each other with fists in the air.
It's not going to work out for us as a society, as a species, as a nation, as a civilization.
It's going to work out terribly.
It's very bad. And the media loves pitting us against each other, right?
Ooh, these white supremacists or this black criminality.
Let's stop that. You know, when the devil extends his hands and says, I invite you to hate people.
Don't we have to slap that claw away and live better and live right and face the facts and stop blaming and stop attacking and stop getting hysterical?
Wait for the facts to come in.
Wait for the data to come in.
Because here's what's most likely going to happen, and this is why I'm putting so much time and effort into this video.
Here's what is most likely going to happen.
The prejudice and the hysteria around this case are going to be surging up to what hopefully is the blank objective wall of facts, reason, and evidence in the court of law And these two men, Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, are going to be acquitted.
And then what's going to happen?
Oh, the whole system is racist, white privilege, supremacy, blah, blah, blah.
And then what do you get? You get riots.
You get arson. You get murder.
You get looting. You get theft.
You get old scores being settled in back alleys in the chaos of an L.A.-style post-Rodney King hellish landscape of endless rioting and brutality.
And the people in poorer communities are the ones who are going to cough on the smoke and suffer the most.
How about we break the cycle?
How about we stop using inflammatory language?
How about we wait for the facts?
The alternative to facts, the alternative to reason, It's only violence.
And we need to step back from that brink.
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