Fox News promoted a conspiracy theory that the racist fringe group known as the New Black Panthers is the secret driving force behind legal action taken against George Zimmerman, the man who killed 17 year-old Trayvon Martin.

Conservative race-baiting activist J. Christian Adams, who gained conservative fame after Fox adopted his false smear that the Justice Department dropped charges against a black defendant accused of voter intimidation due to racial bias, appeared on Fox & Friends on July 15 to comment on Zimmerman's not guilty verdict.

Adams quickly demonstrated his New Black Panther fabulist tendencies. He baselessly claimed that the NAACP has “teamed up with” the New Black Panthers after the NAACP urged the Justice Department to pursue civil rights charges against Zimmerman. Adams then claimed that the New Black Panthers “were the spark behind” the investigation into Trayvon Martin's death after local police failed to arrest Zimmerman for weeks, adding that “the Justice Department responded to their demands.” After Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asked why it seems that “the Department of Justice is taking their marching orders from the New Black Panther Party,” Adams recited a litany of cases in which the Justice Department intervened where minorities may have been adversely affected and claimed that they demonstrate “a radical racial agenda” from Attorney General Eric Holder. Adams concluded by asking if Holder “will listen to the New Black Panthers” when deciding whether to file civil rights charges against Zimmerman.

Despite Adams' paranoid conspiracy theories that found a home on Fox News, the New Black Panther Party is nothing but a small racist fringe group. The Anti-Defamation League calls the organization “the largest organized anti-Semitic and racist black militant group in America,” but notes that the group's attempts to do large-scale action have fizzled. The Southern Poverty Law Center has similarly labeled the group “a virulently racist and anti-Semitic organization.”