Charge: Rahm Emmanuel Suppressed the Shooting Video Until After the Election

I know that has been the speculation, but this is more than a speculation now.

Rahm Emmanuel's city lawyers were willing to offer the family of the slain man a $5 million payout jackpot -- if they played ball and agreed to keep the video secret for "at least several years."

CHICAGO -- City of Chicago lawyers, after meeting with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, demanded the Laquan McDonald family bury the video showing the killing of their son by a police officer.

Emanuel said last month that Stephen Patton, Chicago’s corporation counsel, briefed him "towards the end of March" about what the dashboard-camera video showed and about the proposed $5 million settlement with McDonald’s estate. After that briefing, Patton’s second-in-command, Thomas Platt, drafted settlement language to keep the dashcam video hidden for at least several years, according to emails reviewed by The Daily Beast (PDF).

Michael Robbins, an attorney for the McDonald estate, balked at the demand.

...

Emanuel had maintained since McDonald’s death that he has never seen the dash-cam video, but the emails prove the mayor knew exactly what the footage showed when city lawyers negotiated a deal that would at least delay the video's release. Attorneys for McDonald's estate sent Platt screenshots of the video and a detailed description...

Emanuel’s lawyers were offering $5 million in hush money to keep this hidden just weeks before the runoff election. And the biggest part of the deal--that McDonald family attorneys agreed to keep the video to themselves until criminal proceedings were concluded--just so happened to be inked the day after Emanuel was re-elected.

But we all know that "accountability" does not exist for Democrats, because the only institution capable of pressuring misbehaving government actors is the media, and the media is actually the power-center of the Democrat Party. The actual politicians are just the face-men (incredibly enough) who don't have notorious enough histories of alcoholism and infidelity and so can actually sort of win an election. (With the media's help.)

A little bit more from Ed Driscoll.

posted by Ace at 03:03 PM

| Access Comments