The Ben Crump / Matt Gutman connection

Blogger Gucci Little Piggy has a series of posts on his blog about the alleged phone call between Trayvon and his girlfriend Deedee, and the ABC reporter Matt Gutman.

It seems that this whole incident became national news because Ben Crump was able to get the attention of Gutman, and Crump has been feeding Gutman information since. Gutman was the reporter who got the scoop on the conversation between Trayvon and Deedee, and also the videotape of Zimmerman being taken into custody at the police station.

As far as I can tell, Ben Crump got to Deedee first, and then made a tape recording of her telling Ben about the phone call. It’s not clear if the police ever followed up with their own interview. It has been misreported that there’s a recording of the phone conversation between Trayvon and Deedee when in fact there’s just a recording of Deedee talking to Ben Crump, and who knows how Ben Crump prepped her for that?

I’ve wondered where the video of Zimmerman being taken into custody at the police station came from, but now my best guess is that Ben Crump somehow got hold of it, and then he gave it to Gutman. But how did Crump get it?

* * *

So as we see, Ben Crump has been the mastermind behind the story from the beginning. His accomplishments probably include:

• Getting ABC news to initially report the story.
• Creating the imagery of Trayvon being armed only with Skittles and an Arizona Iced Tea, even though there has been no police report released about what Trayvon was carrying with him. It doesn’t matter if it never happened that way, the national media don’t care about the real facts.
• Getting Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson involved.
• Making a recording of Trayvon’s girlfriend in which she tells a story casting Trayvon in a favorable light.
• After a bunch of news articles appear talking about how Zimmerman was beat up and had a broken nose, somehow he obtains a police video in which Zimmerman doesn’t look so bad and hands it off to Matt Gutman at ABC News.

Comments

[amac78]

DeeDee called Trayvon at 7:12PM on Sunday 2/26/12, and was talking to him just before he was killed.

ABC News reporter Matt Gutman memorably wrote:

"Martin's father, Tracey Martin, and mother, Sybrina Fulton, listened to the call, along with ABC News, ashen-faced."

http://tinyurl.com/Gutman-3-20-12-story

That "the call" turns out to have been between DeeDee and, likely, Crump.

Crump shortsightedly remarked that Trayvon's father only became aware of the DeeDee/Trayvon call over the weekend of March 17/18. Thus, the DeeDee/Crump call probably took place within a day of Monday, March 19th. So DeeDee's recollections are at a three-week remove from events.

ABC News reporter Gutman forgot to mention that minor point.

[Allen in Arizona]

Add this to the accomplishments:

He was more than likely behind Trayvon's mom and that trademark.

This to me sounds like a case of a shiesty lawyer manipulating vulnerable parents in their time of grief. I wonder if his firm approached Trayvon's parents to push this case as far as it's gone now.

[jay]

Googling the terms "trayvon girlfriend recording" you get a lot of stuff, but this is characteristic:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57400851-504083/trayvon-martin-victim-of-fatal-shooting-told-girlfriend-i-think-this-dude-is-following-me-attorney-says/

The article is dated March 20. Read it. Crump played an inaudible "recorded affidavit" allegedly given by the gf.

We have no proof that the conversation between Trayvon and gf was recorded. In fact, the idea is ludicrous. How many of us record casual conversations between us and friends?

I disagree that the Skittles business has nothing to do with this case. It has everything to do with establishing what Trayvon was doing, lurking around in a downpour.

So far, we have a narrative about a nice kid who went out for candy and a soft drink for his stepbrother, whose last conversation (sob!) was recorded by his gf.

None of that is factual.

[Chuck Rudd]

Thanks for the link HS. I want to touch again on why I carried through with that series of posts because my initial assumptions are very important. I directly asked Gutman about the recording *of the conversation between Martin and his girlfriend*. I don't see anything ambiguous about the question (then again I'm not a journalist or a lawyer).

Now, I'm nobody, which means that Gutman could have just as easily ignored me altogether. But he responded and he told me, quote, "I am the only person who has that recording". And that recording is the one I specifically asked about. If he misread my question, I've brought it up to him many times now and he hasn't made that argument.

So I believed him, naturally. I proceeded from there and assumed that since he had this recording that Martin's family listened to the recording along with Crump and this girl, Deedee.

It's just that there are so many ways that Gutman, the guy who holds a FREAKING MONOPOLY on this particular stream of information, could have clarified all of this. It shows that his story wasn't meant for insightful analysis. It was meant as fodder or filler or passive consumption by the hoody-wearing horde.

This case has become more about the role of the media in shaping the images we consume. I don't want to downplay a 17 year old's death, but the killing is secondary to the snow job we're experiencing.

[Conquistador]

A while back I heard a caller to a radio show claim he worked at the same law firm as Gloria Allred and that she only had a job because she knows how to play the media. Apparently law firms are aware of the importance of this particular skill set.

[Flico]

Good,good, everything is going as I have forseen... hahahahohohehe