On Monday. September 16, Joel Gilbert will preview his new documentary, “The Trayvon Hoax,” in the 500-seat Ballroom of the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The screening begins at 1 p.m. Admission is free, and Gilbert is encouraging all interested parties to come see for themselves what could be a game-changer in the way the media report racially-charged news. Gilbert’s findings are that significant.

Having written a book on the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin — If I Had a Son-- I have been following Gilbert’s progress with interest. In fact, I introduced Gilbert to George Zimmerman, the man who shot Martin. Those who have followed the case know that not since the Scottsboro boys has any ordinary citizen endured the kind of malicious and conspicuously false reporting Zimmerman has. My hope was that Gilbert would set the record straight.

Gilbert has done that and more. In the course of his relentless research into the shooting and subsequent trial, I can say without risk of overstatement that he has unearthed a legal fraud the likes of which I know no parallel. Not only has Gilbert discovered it, but he has also proved it six ways from Sunday, including DNA and handwriting analysis.

2012 demonstration (photo credit: David Shankbone)

If I were Trayvon Martin’s parents or his family’s attorneys, I would be very nervous right now. If I were Florida state attorneys who prosecuted the case, I would be more nervous still. And if I were the media who covered this case — are you listening Matt Gutman and Lisa Bloom? — I would prepare to be mortified. The coverage of this case was a disgrace from day one.

To uncover this staggering fraud, Gilbert did what reporters used to do. He immersed himself in the milieu that produced Trayvon Martin. He mastered the patois of urban black Miami. He reviewed the thousands of text messages, tweets, Facebook and Instagram postings sent and received by Martin and his friends. He interviewed George Zimmerman and heard, from the only person who knew, Martin’s final words, words that revealed the cause of Martin’s tragic downward spiral.

Gilbert did some serious shoe leather reporting as well. He visited all the relevant Miami-area high schools, the neighborhoods where Martin and his friends hung out, the streets of Miami’s Little Haiti, and the town community where Martin died.

At the end of his research, Gilbert knew Trayvon Martin better than his parents did, literally. As their deposition revealed, they had no idea how Martin’s life had descended into a violent mix of street fighting, guns, drugs, burglary, and sex. Although both parents made good incomes, their separate lives created an abyss where a home should have been, and their once promising son fell straight to the bottom of it.

Unwilling to accept their own responsibility for his demise, they took the bait promised by the family attorneys and sweetened by the media and projected their guilt on to George Zimmerman. Although an Obama supporter and civil rights activist, the half-Hispanic Zimmerman proved to be just white enough to play the “racist” killer role in the unholy melodrama that followed.

In the documentary and even more so in the accompanying book of the same name, the Trayvon Hoax, Gilbert shows how politicians — are you listening Andrew Gillum and Barack Obama? -- exploited the ensuing racial divisions to further their political goals. The gratuitous anger the media and political class stoked throughout this case led to the creation of Black Lives Matter, the parallel Ferguson hoax, and a crime wave that that has devastated black America.

All of this was based on one spectacular fraud, and Joel Gilbert uncovered it. The film trailer and website will be live on Thursday, Sept 12. “The Trayvon Hoax,” book and documentary, will be released and available on Amazon later this week in DVD, digital, paperback, and ebook formats.