Today, months after President Donald Trump issued pardons to hundreds of individuals who were overcharged and politically targeted in the aftermath of January 6, one unsung victim of politically motivated prosecution remains behind bars.
His name is Travis McMichael. For five years now, McMichael has lived in solitary confinement, in a 12-by-12-foot cell, in Hays State Prison in Trion, Georgia. He hasn’t stepped outside in all that time due to constant threats on his life.
Like many of the January 6 defendants, McMichael was subjected to the full force of “woke justice” under the Biden administration – prosecuted not based on facts or law, but in response to racial activism and an effort by Democrats to endear themselves to black voters by portraying whites as racist.
Travis McMichael’s conviction came months after the explosive trial of Derek Chauvin and the massive national unrest that followed George Floyd’s death. In this highly charged environment, jurors across America were made acutely aware that rendering a not-guilty verdict for white defendants in incidents involving black “victims” could place them in the crosshairs of woke justice mobs.
During the Derek Chauvin trial, lynch mobs had demonstrated outside the courtroom and called for Chauvin’s blood. Literally.
Despite the absence of evidence that Chauvin’s actions led to the death of a man with major heart issues who had ingested lethal amounts of drugs, Chauvin was found guilty.
The jurors worried more about survival than justice. Their way to achieve personal security was to accept a compromised sense of justice: “I’ll just vote guilty and let the appeals court deal with it.”
Jurors in the McMichael case were no different than those in Minnesota. They knew the prospect of violence and vengeance after the trial hung over them. This climate made justice impossible.
The jurors simply didn’t want to risk their lives. “Let the appeals court deal with it!”
Travis McMichael’s case also had many comparisons to that of George Zimmerman in 2012. Both men observed suspicious activity in their neighborhoods, and out of a desire to protect their communities and be good citizens, called the police and tried to keep eyes on the individuals in question until law enforcement arrived.
In fact, McMichael recognized Ahmaud Arbery from four video tapes a neighbor had shown him where Arbery could be seen rummaging through his house under construction just before $ 2,500 worth of electronic equipment had gone missing.
Seeing Arbery running by their home, McMichael and his father Greg decided to pursue. Travis pulled his truck up to Arbery and asked him to stop and wait for police to arrive. Abery turned and walked the other way. A few blocks later, the McMichaels parked their truck in the street – only for Arbery to suddenly approach.
McMichael had no way of knowing that a year earlier, Arbery was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia with auditory hallucinations to steal and hurt people, nor that Arbery did not take his medication. Arbery was at the time on probation for stealing a TV from Walmart. The judge allowed none of this into the trial.
Video evidence shows Travis McMichael standing with a shotgun pointed downward as Arbery rushed him. Arbery began striking him while attempting to wrestle Travis’ firearm away.
Although Tavyon Martin attacked Zimmerman unaware that he was armed, Arbery chose to attack a man holding a visible weapon, a suicidal attack. McMichael, taking blows to the head and fearing for his life, fired three shots during the struggle for survival.
As with the Zimmerman case, the local police investigated and classified the Arbery shooting as a case of self-defense.
Months later, however, the release of the video triggered a wave of woke outrage due to the fact that McMichael was white and Arbery was black.
The same woke justice characters who had previously led protests calling for Zimmerman’s arrest, Ben Crump and Al Sharpton, mobilized once more.
This time, they had the full weight of the Black Lives Matter movement and the federal government behind them. Public demands for an arrest intensified. Despite the video evidence which clearly supported McMichael’s self-defense claim, he and his father were charged with first-degree murder.
The media came out swinging against the McMichaels as well. Just as they had falsely portrayed the towering 6 foot three-inch 17-year-old street fighter Trayvon Martin as a smallish 12-year-old child on a candy run, they portrayed the fleeing Ahmaud Arbery simply as “a jogger”.
As documented in my 2019 film The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America, the prosecution in Zimmerman’s trial relied on a fake witness, Rachel Jeantel, who falsely claimed to be Trayvon’s girlfriend and to have been on the phone with him before the shooting.
In reality, Jeantel was two years older than Martin, 150 pounds heavier, and not even a student at Martin’s school.
After meeting with Ben Crump, the actual girlfriend, Diamond Eugene, refused to lie to police, and Jeantel was substituted in by Crump to play Trayon’s girlfriend.
Her testimony fell apart under cross-examination, leading to Zimmerman’s acquittal. But had Zimmerman been tried in the 2021 woke justice climate, like McMichael, he likely would have been convicted regardless of the evidence.
By contrast, the McMichael trial occurred during the apex of woke justice – where emotion, political activism, and jury fear of mob reprisal overruled legal standards. In 2012, McMichael might have walked free, just as Zimmerman did. But by 2021, the landscape had changed.
The judicial system had become captive to performative justice and racial politics.
The McMichael trial centered on Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law. At the time, the law permitted private citizens to detain individuals they reasonably believed had committed a crime. Travis and his father, both military veterans, believed Arbery fit that description based on prior incidents.
However, prosecutors argued that the McMichaels acted illegally in following Arbery, despite their behavior falling within the scope of the then-existing law. In fact, the Georgia legislature quickly changed the statute after the trial – a tacit acknowledgment that the law had allowed precisely what the McMichaels had done.
Adding to the injustice, the trial judge has since taken to the academic speaking circuit, delivering lectures on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Following the state murder convictions and sentences of life without parole, the McMichaels were indicted federally for hate crimes.
The government claimed the motive was racial, based on one racial comment someone had sent Travis on Facebook, and Arbery’s race.
No direct evidence tied the shooting to racial animus. Nonetheless, both men received additional federal life sentences as well.
George Zimmerman was also investigated for hate crimes under the Obama Justice Department. After a yearlong probe, then-Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement acknowledging there was no evidence linking Zimmerman to any racially motivated intent. Yet in the McMichael’s case, that standard of proof was seemingly abandoned.
While Donald Trump has pardon thousands overcharged and over prosecuted during Joe Biden’s woke justice era, Travis McMichael remains incarcerated, largely forgotten. As with Derek Chauvin, however, a Trump pardon cannot undo state charges.
Like George Zimmerman, Travis McMichael was railroaded. He was arrested and charged in a self-defense shooting only because of the color of his skin. As long as Travis McMichael and his father Greg remain imprisoned for life, none of us are free.
Joel Gilbert, is a Los Angeles-based film producer, and president of Highway 61 Entertainment. He is on Twitter: @JoelSGilbert.
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