On Monday, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) made multiple false claims in one tweet, including that white supremacists shot at her in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 death of Michael Brown Jr.
The remarks came in a tweet suggesting Kyle Rittenhouse should not be acquitted after he fatally shot two men and wounded another as they attacked him during a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020.
“When we marched in Ferguson, white supremacists would hide behind a hill near where Michael Brown Jr. was murdered and shoot at us,” Bush tweeted. “They never faced consequences. If Kyle Rittenhouse gets acquitted, it tells them that even 7 years later they still can get away with it.”
Bush’s story of white supremacists hiding behind a hill shooting at protestors appears to be referring to Jeffrey Williams, a black man who shot two police officers during a protest in Ferguson, Missouri.
“The shooting of two police officers during a protest rally in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked an intense manhunt for suspects on Thursday and ratcheted up tensions in a city at the centre of a national debate over race and policing,” Reuters reported. “The incident unfolded while protesters were gathered at Ferguson police headquarters to demand more changes in the wake of the resignation of its long-criticized police chief, Tom Jackson, who quit a week after the release of a scathing U.S. Justice Department report that found his force was rife with racial bias.”
Bush’s other claim that Brown was murdered is also false. According to the Washington Post’s fact-check, “[Kamala] Harris and [Elizabeth] Warren have ignored the findings of the Justice Department to accuse [police officer Darren] Wilson of murder, even though the Justice Department found no credible evidence to support that claim. Instead, the Justice Department found that the popular narrative was wrong, according to witnesses deemed to be credible, some of whom testified reluctantly because of fear of reprisal. The department produced a comprehensive report to determine what happened, making the senators’ dismissal of it even more galling. Harris and Warren both earn Four Pinocchios.”
