The Political Freakshow

Sean Hannity Offered to Pay George Zimmerman's Legal Fees!!!

Yesterday, the Special Prosecutor in the George Zimmerman case released 149 jail house phone calls that Mr. Zimmerman made while being held on bail in April of this year in Seminole County Jail. Last night, GlobalGrind scoured through all of them, trying to decipher the coded language that George uses in his conversations with his family and close friends.

In call #30, from April 14th (3 days after being arrested), George is speaking to one his closest friends and confidantes, “Scott.” As reported by many of our colleagues in the press, including the Miami Herald this morning, George mentions to Scott that his attorney Mark O’Mara is aware of an attempted transfer of $37,000 from his PayPal account to Zimmerman’s wife’s personal account.  This would be big enough news in the case, as Mr. Zimmerman was sent back to jail after being released on his first bond for not disclosing the amount of money he had raised for his legal defense fund.  Furthermore, Mr. O’Mara admitted in court that he did not know anything about the attempted transfers, but with this new evidence being made public, it seems that the attorney was in the know.

However, as we listened to the rest of the call, what struck us as odd was George’s comments about a gentleman, who he calls “SH,” who offered to pay for his entire legal defense, as long as he uses an attorney, who George calls “JB.”  In a previous call (#24), George reveals to his wife, Shellie, that “JB” is Jose Baez, who represented Casey Anthony (this was also confirmed to GlobalGrind by Miami Herald reporter, Frances Robles).  However, the person who offered to pay for his legal fees, “SH” is only identified in code.  The conversation went as follows:

George Zimmerman: He (Mark O’Mara) asked my why JB (Jose Baez) was trying to get involved, and I told him who referred me to him, because I told you Taaffe (George’s friend, Frank Taaffe) reached out to him, right?

Scott: Mm hmm..

GZ: And he said he was gonna try and reach out to the person who referred me to JB, if he has any connections. Taaffe said the people were willing to pay for my defense if I take JB on, and I said—he said that whoever, whether it’s him personally or some party that he’s affiliated with that’s willing to support my defense, they should be willing to support my defense whether I use JB or not.

Scott: Mm Hmm..

GZ: Unless they have some vested interest in meeting him, so…

Scott: So you mean the support coming from SH and…is that what you’re thinking?

GZ: SH…Yeah

Scott: Ha…That’s an interesting dynamic. I’m thinking that that’s probably gonna be…probably gonna raise some tensions with Mark.

GZ: — if he told him about it

Scott: Yeah, no no I mean, he’s not gonna want to be overshadowed

GZ: Right, well he’s not gonna take JB on…no matter what.

Scott: Right

GZ: He said all that would do was polarize the two sides, that would cause tension, and I said ‘yeah, yeah I agree 100%’ so he seems to be very confident and uh, very ya know realistic, although there’s a lot of hype around it in the media, when it boils down to it, there’s a case that…it’s…their argument is not strong basically.

Later in the conversation they discuss contacting “SH” via email.

GZ: Well, and the other one you were asking about is last name at the same domain.

Scott: SH?

GZ: Yeah, it’s just the last name and then the same domain that I just gave you.

Scott: Really?

GZ: Yeah

Scott: You’ve had contact with him..

GZ: ..No..

Scott: ..That way?

GZ: Yeah

Scott: Oh, I didn’t know that. Should I reach out to him or no?

GZ: Run it by O’Mara first.

Scott: Gotcha

GZ: Because he’s going to anyway.

Scott: But he still needs to be at arm’s length

GZ: Yeah, I agree.

Scott: I miss you, boy!

GZ: I do, too!

GlobalGrind spent this morning trying to confirm the identify of “SH.” A rock solid source has told us that the personal email address for “SH” that George Zimmerman gives to his friend, Scott, is in fact the personal email address for Sean Hannity, thus confirming that “SH” is in fact the Fox News host. 

If you recall, Sean Hannity had a relationship with George, as he spoke to George a few days before his initial arrest, which he spoke about on his Fox News show on April 11th.

“I want to set the record straight,” Hannity said on his Fox News program. “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.”

Hannity had previously spent many segments of his show discussing the case, including securing the first interview with George Zimmerman’s father, whom he silhouetted to protect his identity. At one point during his early coverage of the case, Sean proposed the idea that the whole thing could have been “a horrible accident.”

“Could this just be, you know, a case where Trayvon was running because he thought he was in jeopardy, […] Is it possible it was just a horrible accident?” Hannity asked during a March broadcast.

George Zimmerman decided not to use Jose Baez as his attorney and stuck with Mark O’Mara. We do not know if Sean Hannity is funding Mr. Zimmerman’s legal defense with Mr. O’Mara at the helm. We reached out to Mr. Hannity for comment and are awaiting a response.