Megyn Kelly Suspects Laquan McDonald Shooting Cover-Up [Video]
Megyn Kelly strongly implied that a politically motivated cover-up surrounds the fatal shooting of teenager Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer who now faces a first-degree murder charge.
McDonald was reportedly shot 16 times by the officer, who is now out on $1.5 million bail.
On her show, the host of FNC’s The Kelly File raised two issues about the case.
- Video of the October, 2014, shooting was kept under wraps for more than a year, and only released on November 24, many months after Mayor Rahm Emanuel was reelected for second term in an April 2015 runoff election.
- The U.S. Department of Justice launched investigations within days of the Michael Brown and Freddie Gray deaths in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, respectively, in contrast to the delayed launching of a federal probe into the Laquan McDonald case.
Mayor Emanuel is President Obama’s ex-chief of staff at the White House. Obama’s fellow Democrat was also a formerly a U.S. Congressman representing a Chicago-area district.
Obama apparently only days ago commented on the Laquan McDonald case, unlike his immediate response to the above-mentioned police controversies, Megyn Kelly noted.
On November 25, Obama wrote on Facebook that he was deeply disturbed by the footage of the shooting of the 17-year-old.
Protesters converged on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile commercial district on Black Friday in the wake of the video release of the Laquan McDonald killing.
Against the backdrop of the growing outcry, the mayor fired police chief Garry McCarthy on December 1. Emanuel is also setting up a task force to study police violence.
Some Chicagoans have also called for the resignations of Emanuel and Alvarez.
Now: demonstrators inside county building demanding Anita Alvarez resign #justice4laquan #LaquanMcDonald pic.twitter.com/KaTmSljsKp
— Aaron Cynic (@aaroncynic) December 3, 2015
The city also paid out $5 million to McDonald’s family in a settlement for any claims arising out of the fatal police shooting.
During a panel discussion Tuesday night, Megyn Kelly addressed the potential disparate treatment that may have been in play in how the U.S. Department of Justice approached the Laquan McDonald case.
“You go to Chicago, and it took six months for them to announce any DOJ investigation …two days after Michael Brown was killed, [former AG Eric Holder] said this case must be reviewed … the question is whether there is a double standard when it involves a friend of the president …”
Watch the entire conversation embedded below and draw your own conclusions about whether cronyism or favoritism might have been a component.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5xgqHokR5k
Obama foes have claimed that this could be another form of selective enforcement or non-enforcement of the law which was reflected, for example, by heightened IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups (where the Justice Department investigation ultimately found no criminal activity) or the federal prosecution of anti-Obama documentarian Dinesh D’Souza for a relatively minor campaign finance violation.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on December 1 sent a letter to current U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch calling for, among other things, a federal civil rights investigation of the Chicago PD’s policy on using deadly force and whether a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing exists on the force.
According to Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass, black voters in the 2015 mayoral election would have abandoned Emanuel in droves “if the public had seen Officer Jason Van Dyke pumping 16 shots into McDonald…”
[Photo by Richard Drew/AP]
