Below is my letter to President Trump urging him to pardon Derek Chauvin. You can join the effort by signing the petition at: pardonderek.com.
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Dear President Trump,
We write to urge you to immediately issue a pardon for Officer Derek Chauvin, who was unjustly convicted and is currently serving a 22-and-a-half year sentence for the murder of George Floyd and associated federal charges.
As you know, this was the inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in cities across the United States and set America’s race relations on their worst footing in recent memory. Yet the evidence demonstrates that Derek Chauvin did not murder George Floyd.
George Floyd was high on fentanyl. He had a significant pre-existing heart condition. He was saying he could not breathe before he was even out of the car. Derek Chauvin, for large segments of the widely circulated video of the encounter, had his knee on George Floyd’s shoulder or back, not on his neck; this was confirmed by the autopsy, which showed no damage to George Floyd’s trachea. There was no accusation at trial that Derek Chauvin targeted George Floyd for his race.
Perhaps most significantly, there was massive overt pressure on the jury to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence or any semblance of impartial deliberation. This pressure took the form of threats, coercion, and intimidation. The Mayor of Minneapolis pre-judged the outcome of the trial and immediately issued a large settlement to the Floyd family. Then-President Biden, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and others pre-judged the outcome of the trial and took to national media to create pressure on the jury to go along with their preferred narrative.
Under these circumstances, there was no opportunity for blind justice to work, and a man is now rotting in prison because of it.
Make no mistake—the Derek Chauvin conviction represents the defining achievement of the Woke movement in American politics. The country cannot turn the page on that dark, divisive, and racist era without righting this terrible wrong.
Thank you for your commitment to ending the weaponization of the American justice system.
Sincerely,
Ben Shapiro
