TRUMP TWEETS ANGER OVER ACQUITTAL IN SHOOTING CASE
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump lashed out Friday after a jury acquitted a Mexican man in the killing of a woman on a San Francisco pier, calling the verdict “disgraceful” and suggesting Democrats will pay a price for being “weak on Crime.”
Trump launched an aggressive series of tweets over the 2015 shooting of Kate Steinle, which he often cited during his presidential campaign to push for a wall on the Mexican border. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges Thursday.
The president began by calling it a “disgraceful verdict.” He then wrote that Garcia Zarate “came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent, and yet this info was not used in court. His exoneration is a complete travesty of justice. BUILD THEWALL!”
He added that Democrats are “so weak on Crime that theywill pay a big price in the 2018 and 2020 Elections.”
Garcia Zarate had been deported five times and was wanted for a sixth deportation when Steinle was fatally shot in the back while walking with her father on the pier. He has called the shooting an accident, and his lawyers said the case was unfairly politicized.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that it is “more important now than ever for Congress to secure our borders and provide the resources ... needed to deport criminal illegal aliens and to finally stop sanctuary city policies that cause needless loss of innocent life.