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. 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.
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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.
We’ll start with the alleged conservative commentator Rob Smith, and his analysis on the PBD podcast the other day. Watch:
Notice what his priorities are. He’s primarily concerned about “race relations,” as if that’s somehow a justification for letting a fraudulent criminal conviction remain on a man’s record. He says it wouldn’t “benefit America” to pardon a man who’s clearly innocent. He also claims that it would somehow hurt Donald Trump, who just pardoned every single January 6 defendant because he understands how corrupt our criminal justice system has become. There were a lot of people saying Trump shouldn’t pardon the January 6 defendants because the Left would be really mad and start breaking things. And yet Trump did it anyway, and it was fine.
But as Rob goes on, his argument gets even more embarrassing. Let’s keep listening:
What Rob is saying is pitiful and wrong-headed in the extreme. Arguing that we should let an injustice stand because the BLM mob will be mad if we don’t is repugnant, loathsome nonsense. It’s exactly the sort of pathetic, scared, gutless, limp-wristed mindset that allowed that mob to burn down cities and run roughshod over the culture for years. George Floyd was a violent drug addicted criminal who died because he took a lethal dose of fentanyl and then resisted arrest. I don’t care if it causes “racial strife” to speak this truth. Anyone who plays this emotional blackmail game is not worth listening to. We’ve seen what happens when we allow the Left-wing narrative to run unopposed all for the sake of avoiding “strife.” What happens is that the Left wins everything, we lose everything, and we end up with a whole lot more “strife” than we would have had if we had just spoken up.
Chauvin is an innocent man. Rob can pretend that only “5 podcasters” have the knowledge of the trial to make a statement like that, but it’s not true. Anyone with a passing interest in the facts of this case understands what a travesty this trial was. Rob may not understand. He may be clueless. But he can’t protect his cluelessness onto the rest of us. You don’t put innocent men in prison to avoid “racial strife.” In fact, it only causes more, as we’ve all seen. Again: we have all seen what happens when you let falsehoods, injustices, and moral insanity stand just for the sake of appeasing the Left-wing mob. Conservatives tried that approach for decades. That’s how we got BLM to begin with.
But Rob isn’t the only conservative who’s taking this approach. Someone named JD Sharp posted this response for example:
I know a pardon of chauvin will result in the biggest black influencer campaign ever and will likely lead to a domestic race war worse than 2020, which will then lead to martial law and a totalitarian government controlled by artificial super intelligence.
Can you imagine? Pardoning Derek Chauvin would lead to the “biggest black influencer campaign ever.” Which will then lead immediately to a sci-fi dystopia and the enslavement of mankind. How would that all work exactly?
Fortunately we have JD to explain. He adds:
My full position is pardoning chauvin will result in a massive social media influencer campaign led by Stephen a smith that leads to his presidential campaign run which will lead to the closest thing to a racially driven civil war we’ve ever had that will include actual domestic bloodshed, and very well could turn into martial law just as the most powerful population control tool m, artificial super intelligence, is arriving.
Yes, he’s claiming that Stephen A. Smith could be the Democrats’ nominee if Trump pardons Derek Chauvin — which is probably the single best argument for pardoning Derek Chauvin. It would be a bigger blowout than Nixon in 1972. But we’re supposed to fear this outcome, apparently, because we’ll have a “racially driven civil war.” Of course, that’s nonsense as well. A Chauvin pardon (especially one that doesn’t even free him from prison) wouldn’t lead to widespread rioting like we saw in 2020. We’ve seen with the Daniel Penny acquittal and the pardon of Daniel Perry in Texas that BLM is demoralized and ineffective now. They’ve also lost all of their funding, because the people pulling the strings realize that race riots hurt the agenda they were supposed to be helping.
Because even if riots did result from a pardon, that would only make the public despise Democrats more than they already do. It would be a political catastrophe for the Democrats. If I were really cynical, I’d say pardon Chauvin just so that it drives the Left deeper into madness and further from the mainstream. But I’m not saying that. I’m saying do it because it’s the right thing to do. It just so happens that the right thing and the politically smart thing are one and the same in this case.
Again, though, many conservatives disagree. Here’s Delano Squires for example:
This is a textbook post hoc fallacy, where you look at the timing of events and determine causation solely from that. He concedes that Floyd had enough fentanyl to kill a horse in his system. But because Floyd didn’t die until after Chauvin restrained him, he’s concluding that Chauvin must be the cause. Nevermind the fact that Floyd didn’t actually die on the street, based on the government’s own autopsy report. Nevermind the fact that the coroner didn’t find any serious physical injury to Floyd’s body whatsoever. Nevermind that Floyd couldn’t breathe while he was still in the squad car. With the “post hoc fallacy,” all that matters is the order of events.
For his part, Jason Whitlock responded to Ben Shapiro’s call for a pardon, as well as my own posts on the subject. So let’s start with his general thoughts:
I have no issue with the people arguing against a Chauvin pardon on technical grounds. The point that a federal pardon would actually hurt him because it would just land him in state prison instead of federal prison is perfectly reasonable. If Trump decided against a pardon for that reason, that’s understandable. If Chauvin himself doesn’t want the pardon for that reason, that would be obviously reason enough to not do it.
Although, for the record, as I alluded to earlier, it’s not necessarily true that Chauvin would end up in state prison after a pardon. And it’s not clear that a pardon would have no practical effect otherwise. As CNN has conceded:
JaneAnne Murray, a University of Minnesota criminal law associate professor who specializes in sentencing .. [said that] inmates such as Chauvin, who might need additional security, still might be allowed to remain in federal prison to serve a state sentence.
Additionally, CNN reports that:
If Chauvin were to receive a federal pardon, he could end up spending less time incarcerated than he would have, even though the state sentence is slightly longer than the federal sentence. … The reason: Prisoners are often required to serve a greater proportion of federal sentences than state sentences, and prisoners sentenced after 1987 are ineligible for federal parole.
Again: Chauvin himself tried to vacate his federal conviction. That seems to indicate that he thinks it would benefit him to get rid of the federal conviction. Regardless, from what I can tell, Jason Whitlock’s primary argument against the pardon is actually more about the politics of the situation.
For example, he posted on X:
What is going on here? This seems out of nowhere from the Daily Wire, given the fact it separated from Candace Owens. If Trump took this on right now, it would sabotage and overshadow other agendas. I believe Chauvin was wrongly convicted… BUT… the timing of this campaign seems out of place.
Whitlock went on to make a similar argument on his show:
I like Jason and enjoy his work, but I must say that this is where the argument starts to come across as a bit disingenuous. Again, if you want to say that a pardon wouldn’t have much practical effect, that’s one thing. Reasonable people can disagree on that. But this is something else entirely.
Whitlock has stated repeatedly that he believes Chauvin didn’t receive a fair trial. He believes the conviction should be overturned. If that’s your belief — and it happens to be the correct belief — then saying “now’s not the time for a pardon” is a dodge. If now isn’t the time, when is the time? If it’s true that pardoning him would be politically catastrophic, should we do it closer to midterms? Should we do it when the 2028 campaign is in full swing? If it’s politically unpopular but right, now is precisely the time to do it. If it’s politically popular and also right, now is still the time. If it’s the wrong thing to do in principle, there is no right time.
Whichever is the case, “now’s not the time” is the kind of thing you say if you don’t want to say what you really think. And in this case, I think there are some conservatives using the “now’s not the time” dodge because they actually agree with the BLM narrative about the case but they don’t want to say it. And there are other commentators who disagree with the BLM narrative and would like to see Chauvin pardoned, but they don’t want to agree with Ben or give him any credit, so they’re finding a reason to object.
Also, again for the record, the call to pardon Chauvin is not “out of nowhere” (as Whitlock and others have claimed). I have personally been calling for a pardon from the moment Trump was elected. I’ve been defending Chauvin since before he was even on trial. I have called out the BLM false narrative on this case from the very beginning. And I’ll continue to do so, while advocating for a full federal pardon.
That’s because there is no question that a pardon is morally the correct course of action in this case. I also think it’s probably the correct course of action tactically. Chauvin is an innocent man who was offered up for the slaughter in the name of racial justice. His continued incarceration is a national disgrace. So is his coerced confession in federal court. The first step, therefore, is to nullify that conviction with a pardon that will get Chauvin out of prison several years earlier, at a minimum. Anything that gets us closer to the day when Derek Chauvin is free — joining the ranks of Daniel Penny, Daniel Perry, Kyle Rittenhouse and many other victims of the BLM mob — is something every conservative should support. That’s the best course of action for Derek Chauvin. And it’s the best course of action to ensure that no innocent man has to endure what he did, ever again.
