As much of the political punditry on the right continues to focus on Pennsylvania Democrat Senate hopeful John Fetterman‘s post-stroke mental competency, a deeper dive into his past reveals a man whose views on compassion and the criminal justice system fall far outside those of mainstream America.
One case in point was the vote of the then-lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania to free a thug who hacked a man to death with garden shears and later tried to hire a hitman to kill his accomplice in the brutal murder. As reported by Washington Free Beacon, Charles “Zeke” Goldblum was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1976 killing of George Wilhelm as part of an insurance fraud cover-up.
According to prosecutors, Goldblum and an accomplice, Clarence Miller, lured Wilhelm to a Pittsburgh parking garage, where Goldblum stabbed the man 26 times. While out on bail, Goldblum tried to hire an undercover police officer to murder Miller, who fingered Goldblum for the crime.
In other words, a brutal convicted murderer who any “sane” [sarc] person would be “happy” to set free.
Here’s more, via Free Beacon:
Goldblum, who has maintained his innocence, was poised to die in prison, having unsuccessfully appealed for clemency seven times. But in 2019, Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons, which Fetterman chairs, voted unanimously to release Goldblum from jail, overriding the wishes of Wilhelm’s family.
To justify its decision, the board points to the judge and prosecutor on Wilhelm’s case, who have since concluded he was the accomplice rather than the principal assailant.
But in 2007, a federal appeals court rejected Goldblum’s request for an evidentiary hearing, writing, “there is just too much evidence here establishing Goldblum’s guilt.” Both judge and prosecutor have been vague about what information motivated their reversal, and no one has claimed Goldblum is innocent of the hitman charge.
But Fetterman?
The Democrat Senate nominee, who’s locked in a tight election race with Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz (who has his own issues, but is a far better option than screw-loose Fetterman), cheered Goldblum’s release from prison in 2021, saying he was “happy that he’s going to be going home to his family” and that Goldblum was “not a threat to public safety.”
The commutation, noted WFB, was part of Fetterman’s pledge to “transform” Pennsylvania’s pardon process and free more prisoners — always the left’s primary objective — a record the stroke survivor has bragged about on the campaign trail. Fetterman specifically points to his efforts to end life sentences for those involved in murders but did not directly “pull the trigger.”
So apparently, on Planet Fetterman, luring a man to his death and stabbing him 26 times with a pair of garden shears falls into the “not as bad as” category. Why should we be shocked, I suppose, given that 49 out of 50 sitting Democrat senators voted in June in support of on-demand abortion until birth? Fetterman would fit right in with Chucky and Nancy and the gang.
Fetterman hasn’t exactly followed his “pull the trigger” standard all that closely, as WFB noted.
In addition to his vote to free Goldblum, Fetterman has voted to free “triggermen” convicted of first-degree murder. In one case, he was the only member of the board to vote in 2021 to release Wayne Covington, who pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for killing a man for money to buy heroin, another example of why Republicans correctly argue that Fetterman is “too far left” and “dangerously liberal on crime.”
But, as is the case with all Democrats more concerned with compassion for murderers than with victims and their families, Fetterman’s inexcusable record as the chair of the board might not be the winning campaign issue he and Democrats tout it to be — as might also prove to be the case in November with the Democrat Party’s activist support of on-demand abortion.
The cherry on the Fetterman Sundae.
Fetterman has pushed to lower Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons vote-to-release threshold to 4-1. In January, as WFB reported, he appointed his campaign political director, Celeste Trusty, as secretary of the Board of Pardons.
Trusty supports many of the same criminal justice “reform” policies supported by Fetterman and has also called to “disarm the police.” Moreover, she is a self-avowed “friend” of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the imprisoned former Black Panther who murdered Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.
The bottom line:
The “compassionate” Democrat Party is anything but.
Democrats anoint themselves “protectors” of children, yet support on-demand, late-term abortion. They claim to be the “party of women’s rights,” but back biological males kicking the hell out of them in women’s sports. They’re incapable of defining the term “woman” because they’re not “biologists,” yet rediscover its definition in a nanosecond when a “woman’s rights are ripped away” by the Supreme Court’s return to the states of that right — where it has always rested, constitutionally — to establish respective abortion laws and related health policies.
John Fetterman is yet another allowable product of a party that continues to run its train off the track of justice and moral conviction.