Mark O'Mara, the defense attorney for George Zimmerman, speaks to the media after leaving the John E. Polk Correctional Facility where he met with his client on April 21, 2012 in Sanford, Florida.
The website that George Zimmerman created to solicit donations before he was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin has been officially taken down–but the former neighborhood watch captain still raised a significant chunk of money in the time it was active.
Think six figures: a little over $200,000. Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, said that even he wasn’t aware of the money until Wednesday, when he was trying to “shut down” his client’s “full internet presence.”
“[George Zimmerman] asked me what to do with his PayPal accounts,” O’Mara said. “And I asked him what he was talking about. And he said those are the accounts that had the money from the Web site he had and that there was about $200,000, $204,000 that had come in to date.”
Zimmerman was granted $150,000 bail, but only had to put up $15,000 to be released. The CNN host noted this and asked O’Mara if the knowledge of these funds would have affected the judge at the bond hearing. O’Mara conceded, “It might have. I’m certainly going to disclose it to the court tomorrow.”
And even though Zimmerman’s do-it-yourself website was taken down yesterday, O’Mara said that he plans to start a legal defense fund “done the right way” to solicit donations. “I’ve had dozens–hundreds actually of people wanting to donate,” the attorney said.