The Trayvon Martin shooting just took a bizarre twist today. From TPM -- George Zimmerman Is Apparently Talking To Sean Hannity But Not His Own Attorneys:
George Zimmerman has gone rogue.
The man accused of killing unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin has been dodging his defense team, trying to talk directly to the people debating whether to prosecute him and apparently having off-the-record conversations with conservative talk jock Sean Hannity.
In an unusual news conference on Tuesday afternoon, Zimmerman’s attorneys said they were withdrawing from his case because of their client’s bizarre behavior in recent days.
“I can’t ethically go forward and say that I’m representing George Zimmerman when I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days and he’s giving interviews, apparently,” said defense attorney Craig Sonner. “I mean, that’s just the rumors I’m getting…There are a lot of things going on that I don’t know about.”
One of the most intriguing claims the attorneys made was that at some point recently, Zimmerman put in a call to Hannity, the Fox News host who aired an exclusive interview with the man’s father last month. Attorney Hal Uhrig sounded particularly unnerved about the lack of information he and his colleague were getting about the call.
“We learned that he had called Sean Hannity of Fox News directly, and not through us,” Uhrig said. “And we believe — I can’t confirm this — we believe that he spoke directly with Sean, off the record.”
Presumably speaking about Hannity, he added: “He’s not even willing to tell us what our client told him.”
Neither Hannity nor a representative of Fox News returned TPM’s requests for comment.
The picture that the attorneys painted of their now former client was of a person out of control. The attorneys said they were not abandoning him completely, but they could no longer speak on his behalf if they were not talking to him directly.
Uhrig said “the final straw” in their decision came Tuesday when they found out that Zimmerman had contacted the special prosecutor who is investigating the case. Zimmerman apparently wanted to talk to the prosecutor without his attorneys. The prosecutor, according to the attorneys, declined to speak to him unless he was represented by counsel.
More of the press conference below the fold.
UPDATE: Sean Hannity addressed the comments made about him by Zimmerman's former attorneys on his show on Fox:
HANNITY: I want to set the record straight about a couple of things. Now for a few weeks we have been pursuing an interview with Mr. Zimmerman to give him a chance to tell his side of the story. Now yesterday I was contacted by an individual that we in fact believe was George Zimmerman. He reached out to me, we spoke on the phone about his case, and I agreed not to report on the contents of that conversation. That's it. I know nothing about his relationship with his now former attorneys.
