Tawana Brawley?  Jussie Smollet?  Guess again.

Until I previewed the incredible and shocking documentary by producer and director Joel Gilbert (Highway 61 Entertainment), The Trayvon Martin Hoax, I really did not know a serious hoax from a cheap Halloween disguise.

Imagine the temerity of prosecutors who would put an imposter on the witness stand and feed her the desired testimony in advance, knowingly suborning perjury.  Now imagine that the phony witness is a mildly retarded juvenile and her family was in on the subterfuge.  Now add to the mix that this occurred in one of the highest-profile court cases in the nation's history.  It was a fraud on the Florida court and an attempt to wrongfully convict an innocent man of second-degree murder using unfair tactics, depriving George Zimmerman of due process.  Yes, that George Zimmerman.

From a front-row seat at the National Press Club I watched an incredible story unfold that should sicken any fair-minded concerned citizen.  The empty seats at the venue represented the mainstream Left media that once clamored for the conviction of George Zimmerman.  Now that the truth about Trayvon Martin is laid bare and the unlawful trial tactics employed are exposed for everyone to see, another veil is about to drop.  How will the mainstream media handle a story that exposes...well, the mainstream media?

Did politicians like Barack Obama and Andrew Gillum ride this explosion of racial angst to fill their campaign coffers and boost their chances at the ballot box?  Did the Democratic Party use this false narrative to stoke the flames of fear and loathing to maintain their lock on the black vote?  Did the Trayvon hoax trigger and fuel race riots in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Chicago?  Did the floodgates of racial violence open wide after the Trayvon hoax?  Did the Trayvon episode embolden other hoaxters to pile on with their phony nooses and spray-painted racial slurs?

They thought no one was looking, or, as in the case with magicians, they expected you to look in the wrong direction.  They almost got away with it.  It took a deep dive by Joel Gilbert to find the trap doors and hinged mirrors.

Mr. Gilbert, by exposing corrupt prosecutors, actually uncovered a bigger cabal and a larger problem for the nation: a left-leaning media establishment that cares not for the truth.  In fact, these people loathe the truth. 

The notion that government lawyers, prosecutors, officers of the court, are willing sock puppets for a radical Democratic Party and its water-carriers in the media should scare you.

That these same government prosecutors feel they have the freedom to break any and all rules and get away with it, disregarding justice and perverting the notion of constitutional government, tells you all you need to know about where we have arrived as a republic and where we live as a moral people.

Just when you thought investigative journalism is dead, along comes a guy who is willing to do the deep dive, the heavy lifting.  At times, the job involved old-school detective work — digging through phone records, filing FOIA requests, searching high school yearbooks, and trekking through ghettos like Miami's Little Haiti.

Thank God for journalists like Joel Gilbert.

Willie Shields is a radio host, a paralegal, and author of Exit 13A – A Control Tower Diary.  A "once and always" U.S. Marine and a former air traffic controller, Mr. Shields resides in Wilmington, Delaware.  He responds to email: WSHIELDS1775@VERIZON.NET, Twitter @WILLIEONRADIO.

Image: David Shankbone via Flickr.