White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday that President Obama is unlikely to opine about the controversial case unfolding in Chicago regarding the shooting death of a black teen by a white police officer, but rejected the idea that Obama will stay quiet because the city is run by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff.
Earnest was asked if Obama was staying out because Emanuel is Obama’s friend, and was reminded that in the Ferguson, Mo., shooting, Obama very quickly spoke out against the shooting. “All that I can think of that’s different is that he wasn’t friends with the mayor of Ferguson,” the reporter noted.
But Earnest rejected that theory.
“What we’ve seen is, we’ve seen these kinds of situations in a lot of the cities across the country, places like Baltimore and Minneapolis, and the president, in each of those situations, has been cognizant of the limits that are placed on the president of the United States, that his public expressions, either of support of criticism, could be perceived by some as interfering with an independent law enforcement investigation,” Earnest said.
“And the president believes strongly that law enforcement investigations should be conducted based solely on the facts and free from even the appearance of political influence,” he continued. “So that explains entirely the decision that the president has made with regard to this specific case.”
Earnest was also pressed on whether the White House thinks Emanuel may have delayed releasing the video showing the death of the teenager and the hands of police in order to ensure his re-election.
“I haven’t heard the … president opine on potential motivations there,” he said.
Emanuel fired his police chief over the case, but now Emanuel himself is under fire amid accusations that he deep-sixed the video of McDonald’s death until after municipal elections that saw him re-elected major of the nation’s third-largest city. Earnest said whether Emanuel remains as mayor would be a decision for people in Chicago to make.
“Obviously, the citizens of the city of Chicago will have to determine who should be running the city, including evaluating his commitment over the long term to implementing those kinds of reforms,” Earnest said about his former boss. “And that’s why we have elections, so that city officials are held accountable, as they should be.”
Earnest acknowledged that the Justice Department is already looking into the Laquan McDonald case and the Chicago Police Department’s investigation of it, and said whether the nation’s federal prosecutor will delve further into the Chicago Police Department’s practices is up to “career prosecutors.”
The Illinois attorney general has requested a federal “patterns and practice” probe, but Attorney General Loretta Lynch has not announced yet whether her investigators will open such an interrogation.
It’s “a decision for federal career prosecutors at the Department of Justice to make,” Earnest said. “So any comment on the White House’s preference or the president’s preference could be viewed as some as interfering with what should be an independent criminal investigation.”
Emanuel said he opposes a broader Justice Department inquiry.
