By Matt Walsh, 03/10/25
A couple of months ago we discussed once again the travesty of justice that was the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin [pictured right] . This was a trial that was conducted just down the street from ground-zero of the BLM riots of 2020, which destroyed Minneapolis’ police precinct, caused $500 million in damage to more than 1,500 businesses, and resulted in several deaths. We’re talking about the single most destructive riot in United States history, after the Los Angeles riots of 1992. And it happened in the same place where Derek Chauvin’s trial was being held. But the judge — who later declared that “every case is about racial justice” in some way — didn’t move the trial to a different venue. Instead, he made sure that Chauvin’s fate was determined by jurors who knew well that their city would burn to the ground if they didn’t convict. They had security fencing and National Guard troops all around the courthouse throughout the trial, just in case that message wasn’t clear.
And those jurors did exactly what you’d expect them to do, under those circumstances. They convicted Chauvin without even addressing the question of whether he had actually killed George Floyd. The jurors admitted it on CNN; they simply decided that Chauvin didn’t express enough concern for Floyd’s well-being. That was how they rationalized it. For their part, prosecutors repeatedly lied to the jury about the level of fentanyl in Floyd’s system at the time of his death. Specifically, prosecutors compared blood samples taken from Floyd before he was pronounced dead, to samples taken from overdose victims long after their deaths. And they pulled this off without the defense team noticing it. Their goal was clear: They wanted to downplay the sheer amount of fentanyl in Floyd’s system, which was well over a lethal dose.
That’s why Floyd kept telling officers that he couldn’t breathe, long before he was anywhere near the ground. It’s also why Floyd was violently resisting arrest, which is why Chauvin had to restrain him on the ground, as he was trained to do. And that’s not even getting into the evidence of Floyd’s heart tumor, which was withheld from Chauvin by his attorney.
After Chauvin’s state conviction, federal prosecutors from the Biden administration pursued additional charges, on the theory that Chauvin had deliberately violated George Floyd’s civil rights. This case was somehow even more absurd than the original murder trial. It hinged on the theory that Chauvin had made the conscious decision to abuse his authority to harm George Floyd, even though he knew that about 20 people were recording him. But Chauvin signed off on a guilty plea to these federal charges for two reasons. First of all, it wouldn’t mean any additional prison time. His sentence would run concurrently with his state sentence. And secondly, Chauvin would be transferred to a federal prison, which are generally much safer (and better-run) than state prisons. In other words, no serious person sees this guilty plea as an actual admission of guilt. Chauvin was clearly making the best of what seemed to be a hopeless situation.
But in a matter of months, all of this logic — as reasonable as it seemed at the time — would fall apart. For one thing, Chauvin was stabbed 22 times in the law library of a federal prison in Arizona. So the safety justification for taking the plea wasn’t actually that compelling, in retrospect. Additionally, Chauvin learned about George Floyd’s heart condition — information that was being withheld from him at the time he signed the guilty plea. And more generally, Chauvin’s situation no longer seems hopeless, because the broader political environment has changed. Another victim of mob justice, Daniel Perry in Texas, received a pardon after he was convicted for defending himself from the BLM mob. Then Donald Trump was elected, promising full pardons for January 6 defendants. And then yet another victim of mob justice, Daniel Penny, was acquitted in New York.
Given this background, you can see why Derek Chauvin has been fighting to have his federal guilty plea overturned. It’s an important step towards his ultimate goal of vacating his state murder conviction. Once the federal case is gone, then prosecutors can no longer use Chauvin’s admission of guilt — which was obviously coerced under the circumstances — against him. Additionally, Chauvin would probably be released from prison about two years earlier if the federal sentence was vacated, because of rules about how federal prisoners need to serve out most of their sentences.
Despite the obvious injustices that Chauvin has endured throughout this process, he hasn’t had a lot of major voices lining up behind him with a specific, practical plan of action. But last week, as you may have seen, that changed. Ben Shapiro launched an effort to have Chauvin’s federal conviction pardoned by Donald Trump. Even aside from the more tangible benefits this might have for Chauvin — for example, getting him out of prison a few years earlier — a presidential pardon would also be a major step towards clearing Chauvin’s name, and rejecting the central, fraudulent BLM narrative that has done so much damage to this country in recent years. And even if the pardon never happens, it’s still good to advocate for one. It helps Chauvin to have people vocally supporting him. And it helps the country to have people repudiating the BLM narrative once and for all.
But not all “conservative commentators” are on board with the idea. Yes, there are conservatives arguing against a presidential pardon for Derek Chauvin, who was clearly convicted in violation of his constitutional right to a fair trial. This is a man who was offered up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of racial justice. He was sent to prison as a human sacrifice, because the mob demanded that someone must pay for the fact that a violent career criminal overdosed on fentanyl. And yet there are “conservatives” arguing that we should allow this injustice to stand. We should sit with our mouths shut as the sacrificial lamb is burned at the altar.
So I’m going to go through all of their arguments, one-by-one, because this is an issue that implicates both the criminal justice system, and the state of the conservative movement. ....