Cardi B has been one of the most outspoken celebrities when it comes to politics. She interviewed presidential candidates such as Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden, and she clashed with conservative talking heads such as Tomi Lahren and Candace Owens.
The Grammy-winning rapper is also very vocal about police brutality and state-sponsored violence. In particular, she helped inform her over 70 million Instagram followers about Breonna Taylor, the African-American EMT who was killed in her own home by Louisville police officers during a botched raid based on a no-knock warrant.
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Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron recently announced the three cops involved in the death of Taylor would not be charged with any serious crimes such as murder or manslaughter. A grand jury convened by Cameron only indicted Brett Hankison on three counts of wanton endangerment for firing shots into the walls of Taylor’s white neighbors.
One member of that grand jury filed a motion in Jefferson County to have the sealed grand jury transcripts and records released as a way to hold Cameron accountable for his public statements about the case. The filing reads, “Using the grand jurors as a shield to deflect accountability and responsibility for these decisions only sows more seeds of doubt in the process while leaving a cold chill down the spines of future grand jurors.”
There is also news that a Kentucky State Police ballistics report does not support Cameron’s assertion that Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, shot one of the police officers the night of her death before the cops returned over 30 rounds. Walker has maintained he fired a warning shot because the officers did not announce themselves and he believed they were intruders.
Cameron definitively ruled out “friendly fire” as the cause of officer Jonathan Mattingly being struck by a bullet during the raid. However, the KSP ballistic report states the 9mm bullet that hit Mattingly was neither “identified nor eliminated as having been fired” from Walker’s gun. Cardi B seized on this contradiction from the Kentucky government’s official statement.
“I told you motherf-ckers. I did a video a couple of days ago talking about this – that I will not believe the [Attorney General] or a f-cking D.A. office with this bullsh-t ass story that they took so long to put out about this Breonna Taylor sh-t,” said Cardi in an Instagram video. “I told y’all n-ggas I’m not going to believe the story because I heard the story out of Breonna Taylor’s own momma. So what am I going to believe? Breonna Taylor’s momma or these motherf-ckers? I’m going with Breonna Taylor’s momma.”
The “WAP” hitmaker went on to shout out Until Freedom co-founder Tamika Mallory, an activist who has been organizing on the frontlines in Louisville for months. Cardi also chastised people in her Instagram comments section that “jumped to conclusions” about Kenneth Walker, a licensed gun owner, allegedly shooting one of the cops first when no physical evidence has been presented to support that claim.
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