Rep. Jasmine Crockett blames Karmelo Anthony verdict on racism, downplays murder weapon

By Jon Brown, Christian Post Reporter Thursday, June 11, 2026

Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, downplayed the size of the blade Karmelo Anthony used to kill Austin Metcalf and suggested his recent guilty verdict and 35-year sentence were the result of racism.

During a Tuesday episode of her podcast "Clock It with Crockett," Crockett disputed that the knife Anthony used to stab the 17-year-old Metcalf during a track meet at Memorial High School in Frisco, Texas, last year could be considered a "deadly weapon."

"Wait a minute, it was this?" she said, gesturing with her fingers to indicate a small blade. "Was it a switch? I don't know what he had."

When one of her guests said the murder weapon was like a Swiss Army knife, she said, "Yeah, like with the little scissors and everything and whatever, so it was small."

“Well, I would argue the size of it alone, you wouldn't even think it's a deadly weapon," she added.

Crockett also claimed that all the members of the jury were white, which sources close to the trial have confirmed is false, according to Fox News Digital.

"I'm not necessarily convinced — not that I could tell you the name of one person on this jury — that we had 12 impartial white folk out of Collin County sitting on a jury for this young black man," she said.

Anthony, now 19, was found guilty of first-degree murder Tuesday after jurors in Collin County, Texas, delivered the verdict in just over three hours on the trial's fifth day.

Prosecutors argued Anthony's stabbing of Metcalf was an unjustified attack related to a dispute over whether Anthony could be under the tent of Metcalf's team during a rainy track meet. Defense attorneys argued that Anthony felt threatened and believed he needed to defend himself when physical contact was made.

Speaking with TMZ on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Crockett echoed the arguments of the defense, again raising questions about Anthony's murder weapon while suggesting his sentence was excessive and "evidence of a broken system."

Jasmine Crockett tells @jacob_wass there was one major factor in the Karmelo Anthony verdict. pic.twitter.com/XYX5bNJagz

— TMZ (@TMZ) June 10, 2026

"Listen, from everything that I understand, which — I wasn't at the trial, because obviously I got a day job — but it's my understanding that Karmelo ended up stabbing, puncturing. I don't know what this tool was that they talk about; knife, or some refer to it as a tool. He ended up hitting Austin one time, and it was about where he hit him: one time, two inches."

Claiming it was apparent Anthony did not intend to repeatedly stab Metcalf, Crockett went on to say that the outcome of the trial was merciless and that "a lot of people don't know what it is to live as a black person in this country." She also said Anthony should have been given the benefit of the doubt, like "so many police officers when they go out and they shoot some black unarmed person, even though they are trained."

"All I know is that it wasn't considered unlawful carrying of a weapon, because the blade was not long enough that they wouldn't even say, 'Well, maybe this was more so something that looked like manslaughter,'" she said.

When asked to respond to those who might question why Anthony was bringing a knife to a track meet in the first place, Crockett said, "Yeah, people may say that, but walk a day in my shoes, and then respond."

"Because we, as black folks, say, why is it that people need long arm guns when we are going out and having a First Amendment protest? But people say that's their right, they are allowed to do that; and again, it wasn't against the law for him to have it. It may have been prohibited by school rules, which he wasn't at his school at the time, but it definitely was not against the law."

Crocket also said she could "guarantee" that if Anthony had been white, he wouldn't have gotten a 35-year jail sentence.

"I don't even think he would've been convicted. If a white boy would have said that they were afraid of a black boy, something tells me that that jury that didn't have any black people on it, they would have believed him," she added.

When asked to respond to calls from figures such as her colleague, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., for Anthony to receive the death penalty, Crockett replied: "Again, racism."

Another of Crockett's colleagues, Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, responded to her comments by suggesting Crockett herself is racist.

"Hatred of white men is the glue that holds the Democratic Party together," he wrote on X.

Crockett, who has raised eyebrows for other controversies and comments she has made during her brief stint in Congress, will be leaving when her term expires at the end of the year. She unsuccessfully ran against Texas state Rep. James Talarico, D-Texas, in their state's Democratic U.S. Senate primary in March.