Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Thursday, February 17th. I'm Nyla Boodoo. Here's

what you need to know today. A reality check on the state of COVID around the world. Plus,

American women are racking up our Olympic medals. But first, today's one big thing. Cross-ecuting

racism in Georgia.

A federal hate crimes trial is underway in Brunswick, Georgia, where Ahmad Arbery was murdered

almost two years ago. The central question in this trial is whether race was the motivating factor

for the three white men who killed Arbery, who was black. But how can prosecutors prove racism?

PagePate is a criminal defense attorney in Brunswick, and is here now with his takeaways from

the first few days of the trial. Hi, Page. Thank you for being with us.

Absolutely. Happy to join you. I think the first question is people might remember that these

men were already sentenced to life in prison by the state in November. Why is there a second trial?

The federal government has charged these three individuals with different crimes,

federal hate crimes, attempted kidnapping, and for the McMichael's using a firearm and commission

of a federal crime. Even though it's the same incident, the death of Ahmad Arbery, those charges

are different from the state murder charges and other felonies that they were tried on back in

state court. So how hard is it for federal prosecutors to make an argument for racism? How do you prove

that? Well, it can be very difficult. The law that they're using to prosecute these individuals

was originally written to go after KKK type racial violence. I mean, church burnings,

things that were clearly not just motivated by race, but intended to send a message about race.

That's not what happened here as far as sending a message. We don't have the same clear indication

that race was the point of this entire incident. But what the federal government does have,

and apparently has a lot of, are text type discussions between these defendants and other people.

...