Elon Musk amplified controversial podcaster Ben Shapiro’s plea for President Trump to pardon former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chavin for the 2020 homicide of George Floyd.
Shapiro on Tuesday advised that “if we are issuing pardons … there is one person that President Trump should pardon from federal charges forthwith.”
US Proper-wing political commentator Ben Shapiro speaks through the CPAC Argentina 2024, Conservative Political Motion Convention, on December 04, 2024 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Photograph by Tomas Cuesta/Getty Photos)
“The inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in the United States and set America’s race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime was, in fact, the railroading of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd,” Shapiro claimed.
He added that Chauvin — who’s concurrently serving a federal sentence of 21 years and 22 1/2 years on state fees after pleading responsible to depriving Floyd of his civil rights and being convicted by a jury of homicide and manslaughter in 2021 — is definitely harmless.
“Make no mistake — the Derek Chauvin conviction represents the defining achievement of the Woke movement in American politics,” Shapiro mentioned. “The country cannot turn the page on that dark, divisive and racist era without righting this terrible wrong.”
Courtroom TV by way of AP, Pool, File
On this picture taken from video, former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin addresses the court docket on the Hennepin County Courthouse, June 25, 2021, in Minneapolis. (Courtroom TV by way of AP, Pool, File)
“Something to think about,” Musk mentioned on X, whereas retweeting a clip from Shapiro’s present.
Floyd died on Might 25, 2020 after Chauvin pressured his knee into the person’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, all whereas Floyd was face down, begging for assist and telling officers he couldn’t breathe. Chauvin’s actions had been documented on video.
The three officers who acted alongside Chauvin — Tou Thao, J. Alexander Keung and Thomas Lane — had been additionally handed concurrent sentences on state and federal fees. Lane was launched in 2024 and Keung was launched in January, whereas Thao stays at a facility in Kentucky, in accordance with Bureau of Prisons information. He could possibly be launched this yr, too.
However even when Trump had been to pardon Chauvin, it will not have an effect on his conviction on state fees, that means the disgraced cop would stay behind bars regardless of having his federal report expunged.
In November 2023, Chauvin survived 22 stab wounds in an assault by one other inmate at a federal jail in Arizona. The inmate allegedly informed investigators on the time that selected the date of the assault — Black Friday — as a nod to the Black Lives Matter motion.
