The daughter of a man who died after being put in a chokehold by a New York City police officer criticized Hillary Clinton's campaign Thursday after new leaked emails revealed her staff discussed how to use her father's death to bolster the Democratic presidential nominee's stance on gun control.
In several tweets, Erica Garner expressed anger after the release of new campaign emails by WikiLeaks.
“I'm troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed ‘using’ Eric Garner,” she posted on Twitter. “Why would you want to ‘use’ my dad?”
Eric Garner died on July 17, 2014, after he resisted arrest for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally in Staten Island. In a video, police officer Daniel Pantaleo was seen taking Garner to the ground with a chokehold. Garner died minutes later. He was 43. His last words — “I can’t breathe” — became a slogan in protests against police brutality nationwide.
Fox News reported that in one released email, Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill wrote on March 17 that "I know we have Erica Garner issues but we don't want to mention Eric at all? I can see her coming after us for leaving him out of the piece."
Another aide, Maya Harris, emailed that "Eric Garner not included because not killed by gun violence," Fox News reported.
Fox reported that Garner tweeted out links to hacked emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, which address how to word an editorial on gun violence. That editorial later ran in the New York Daily News.
"It was obvious that the two white men that were on the email chain didn't even know that my dad wasn't shot," Garner told The Huffington Post in a direct message via Twitter. "It was clear that he was just a dead body for them to manipulate for their use. White liberals have been trying to cram racism into the box of gun violence for a while now."
The New York Post reported that the Justice Department plans to "aggressively pursue" charges against Pantaleo. Authorities in New York determined they could not bring a criminal civil rights case against Pantaleo for Garner's death, the New York Daily News reported.
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