Amanda Knox penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday defending her decision to oppose Donald Trump’s run for president despite his vocal support for her in the past.
The column comes in response to a New York Times profile of a Trump associate who claims Trump is “very upset” with Knox for her “ingratitude” – by which he meant her support for Hillary Clinton – and to an angry backlash from Trump supporters outraged that she criticized him.
“Only in banana republics do political leaders dole out favors to citizens in exchange for their silence and their vote.” Knox wrote.
In 2007, Knox, who was living in Italy at the time, was wrongfully accused and convicted of murdering her British roommate in a highly publicized trial that was eventually overturned by the Italian Supreme Court. Knox’s innocence became a cause celebre in the U.S., and at the time, Donald Trump was among her vocal supporters. In 2011, he called for a boycott of Italy if she wasn’t acquitted.
While Knox makes a point of thanking the president for his support in Wednesday’s column, she decries Trump supporters’ demands for loyalty as the same kind of fervor that led to her wrongful conviction in the first place.
“This conviction is both undemocratic and dangerous,” she wrote. “Just as a person’s support of me should not be based upon my politics or identity, hinging instead on the fact of my innocence, so should my politics hinge on the merits of policy, not personal loyalty.”
Knox also points out that even though Trump had supported her innocence, he continues to maintain the guilt of the Central Park Five, the five black and Latino men who were convicted of raping a woman in 1989, only to be fully exonerated more than a decade later.
“By holding personal loyalty above all else, Trump and some of his supporters create a political environment where reason and justice hold little sway,” she wrote. “He was probably right when he said he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose voters” — that’s what happens when personal loyalty is paramount.”