Peter LaBarbera wrote in an April 10 WorldNetDaily article:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is pledging to “work swiftly” to pardon Army Sgt. Daniel Perry, who was convicted of murdering AK-47-toting BLM extremist Garrett Foster to death in 2020 after Perry accidentally drove his car for Uber into an Austin street mobbed by leftist, anti-cop protesters.
The conviction of Perry, who could face life in prison, is clouded by allegations that Rick Garcia, the George Soros-backed, “progressive” Travis County D.A. who successfully prosecuted him, instructed an investigator of the case to leave out exculpatory information about Perry in his court testimony during the trial.
The Perry case is potentially as incendiary as that of Kyle Rittenhouse, who in 2021 was acquitted of several homicide charges after defending himself with his weapon in riots the previous year in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The accusation that “exculpatory information” was removed from testimony comes from a claim from Perry’s attorneys regarding retired detective David Fugitt. But as prosecutors pointed out, Fugitt’s claim was addressed and rejected before Perry’s trial.
But as with the Media Research Center’s similar defense of Perry, it didn’t age well. A few days later, unsealed documents from the case revealed that Perry had a history of making racist and violent comments on social media, stating just a couple months before the shooting that “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters,” and stating in another post that “It is official I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo.”
LaBarbera seemed to try to inoculate his reporting from this by writing a section of his article wiht the subhead “Liberal media ignores and distorts context”:
Online broadcaster and self-described “disaffected liberal” Tim Pool (@Timcast on Twitter) gave a tutorial of sorts on press bias in analyzing liberal media coverage of the Perry case. In his Rumble broadcast, Pool accused media like the Austin Chronicle of selectively taking portions of past remarks by Perry, out of their proper context, to make it appear as if Perry relished the idea of shooting BLM protesters.
Pool also warned of the danger to Americans’ basic rights if past comments they made defending their Second Amendment right to self-defense can later be used and distorted to provide supposed evidence of murderous- or harmful intent.
LaBarbera then tried to argue that Foster deserved to die:
Pool cited a tweet by former Army Green Beret Jim Hanson who explained how Foster, by having his weapon “employed” or “brandished” (as opposed to merely carrying it), posed an immediate threat to Perry sitting in his vehicle, surrounded by protesters:
In a follow-up tweet, Hanson said: “I’ve seen arguments Garrett Foster was only defending himself when Daniel Perry shot him. The easiest way to actually stay safe would have been stop mobbing his car & brandishing a rifle. But even if he was ‘defending’ himself, that doesn’t remove Perry’s right to do the same.”
LaBarbera didn’t update his story to address the newly released statements by Perry, and WND hasn’t touched the story since. So much for LaBarbera being a fair and balanced reporter.