Influencers, Use Your Influence on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp

He Plays Pontius Pilate While Greg and Travis McMichael Rot in Jail

Travis McMichael and son.

As much I have welcomed the fracturing of Big Media and the rise of the “influencer,” influencers on the right would do well to focus their energy on outcomes they can effect. If, for instance, they spent one-tenth of the words dedicated to the myterious death of Jeffrey Epstein to the videotaped death of Ahmaud Arbery, Greg and Travis McMichael might be free men today.

Derek Chauvin and his colleagues in Minneapolis know they have no hope for a pardon from Democrat Gov. Tim Walz. Georgia, however, has a Republican governor, Brian Kemp. The McMichaels voted for him. Unlike Walz in Minnesota, Kemp does not have to fear his own base, and he terms out in less than two years in any case. He has watched this massive injustice from beginning to end. Pressure needs to be brought.

As I have documented previously the father Greg and the son Travis, both military veterans, were the victims of George Floyd justice. Those interested should read the article linked above. It will outrage you, and outrage is always a good motivator. In sum, after Travis’s 2020 self-defense shooting of the mentally disturbed Arbery, local authorities ruled the homicide justifiable, citing in this case Georgia's citizen arrest law.

Wrote Glynn County District Attorney George Barnhill, “It is my professional belief the autopsy confirms what we had already viewed as shown in the video tape, with the photographs & from the witness statements taken immediately at the scene. The autopsy supports the initial opinion we gave you on February 24th, 2020….We do not see grounds for an arrest of any of the three parties.” The third party, neighbor Roddie Bryan, shot the video.

Under mounting pressure from national media and angry mobs, the state attorney general’s office took control of the case from the locals. On May 7, 2020, within 36 hours of taking over, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation swooped down on the McMichaels’ home. With some 20 heavily armed officers backing him, and several news crews capturing his every move, GBI Agent Richard Dial arrested Greg and Travis and led them away in handcuffs while Travis’s 3-year-old son looked on in horror.

The well-coiffed Kemp found his way to the microphones that very day. "Earlier this week, I watched the video depicting Mr. Arbery's last moments alive. I can tell you it's absolutely horrific and Georgians deserve answers," said Kemp. Three days later Kemp signed House Bill 479. The bill ended the right of Georgia citizens to make an arrest if a crime is committed in the person’s presence "or within their immediate knowledge."

In fact, the McMichaels were attempting to hold Arbery for the police. “The unarmed black jogger” of Kemp’s imagination was in, fact, a chronic thief who had been pillaging the neighborhood for weeks. No one denies the McMichaels had the right guy. Arbery’s crimes were “within their immediate knowledge.” Greg McMichaels had the police on the line when Arbery made a suicidal lunge at his shotgun-wielding son Travis. In signing House Bill 479 Kemp acknowledged that the law was in effect when Arbery died. Going forward, State authorities would pretend it wasn’t.

The show trial for the McMichaels began in November 2021, just months after Derek Chauvin’s trial ended in Minneapolis. After a year and a half of terror following Floyd’s death, the jurors had cause to be frightened. Said legendary Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in reference to the Atlanta jury that convicted the Jewish Leo Frank of murder in 1913, “Mob law does not become due process of law by securing the assent of a terrified jury.”

After the conviction of all three men, Kemp weighed in again. “Ahmaud Arbery was the victim of a vigilantism that has no place in Georgia,” he said in a statement. “We hope the Arbery family, the Brunswick community, our state, and those around the nation who have been following his case can now move forward down a path of healing and reconciliation.”

Greg McMichael and grandson

Implicit in Kemp’s statement is the acknowledgement that these three men were sacrificed to preserve Georgia’s reputation. Had all the parties been white or all black no one “around the nation” would have given a rat’s ass about the case. Can Kemp even begin to pretend otherwise? Worse, he offered these men up in vain. The hoped for “healing and reconciliation” held no appeal to the agents of chaos that made the Arbery shooting a national case.

In January 2022, Judge Timothy Walmsley shocked even conscientious liberals by sentencing Greg and Travis McMichael to life without parole. Having done no more than videotape the unexpected encounter, Roddie Bryan got life but with the possibility of parole. If Kemp had anything to say about these draconian sentences, I could not find it. Nor was he particularly vocal when the Biden DoJ prosecuted the men on gratuitous hate crime charges.

As in all such cases, the media said what they had to say to fuel the hysteria. In truth, Arbery was no more an “unarmed jogger” than Michael Brown was a “gentle giant” or Trayvon Martin a “little boy with Skittles and ice tea.” This case is ripe for deconstruction. Unlike the Epstein case, it holds the potential for solution. The savvy influencer can make his or her reputation by undoing this gross injustice, but first, Gov. Kemp needs to feel the heat.

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