Marjorie Taylor Greene has joined calls for President Donald Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the ex-Minneapolis cop convicted in the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
She claimed Wednesday that Floyd, who died after Chauvin knelt on his neck for nine minutes, a chilling encounter captured on video, had actually died of an overdose—a conclusion that goes against the findings of a Minnesota medical examiner.
“I strongly support Derek Chauvin being pardoned and released from prison,” Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote on X. “George Floyd died of a drug overdose.”
Chauvin, 49, is serving concurrent state and federal sentences of 22.5 years and 21 years, respectively. His appeals to the Minnesota Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court have been denied, but a presidential pardon would erase his federal charges.
Such a pardon would not set Chauvin free, however. He would still have to spend two decades behind bars because of his state charges—something Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, reminded reporters of on Tuesday.
“If Donald Trump exercises his constitutional right to do so, whether I agree—and I strongly disagree with him—if he issues that pardon, we will simply transfer Derek Chauvin to serve out his 22-and-a-half years in prison in Minnesota,” he said.
For now, Chauvin is being held at the Federal Correctional Institution Big Spring in Texas, a low-security prison. He was transferred there after an inmate at his initial facility, FCI Tucson in Arizona, stabbed him 22 times.
Trump said in March he was not considering a pardon for Chauvin, but added it was an issue he had not yet thought about. He has pardoned Jan. 6 rioters and other controversial figures in MAGA 2.0, including the Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
Some right-wing commentators, like Ben Shapiro, have long argued Chauvin should not have been charged with Floyd’s death. This largely stems from a note in Floyd’s autopsy report that said fentanyl intoxication and methamphetamine consumption may have increased the likelihood of Floyd’s death during his encounter with Chauvin.
The May 25, 2020, incident stemmed from Floyd’s use of a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase cigarettes at a convenience store. A bystander recorded Chauvin ignoring Floyd’s pleas that he could not breathe as the cop knelt on his neck—a clip which set off nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in the final summer of Trump’s first term.
Trump condemned 2020 demonstrations that became destructive or violent, but he never defended Chauvin’s conduct. A Chauvin pardon would require Trump to reverse his stance on the situation from five years ago.
“All Americans were rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd,” Trump said at the time. “My administration is fully committed that, for George and his family, justice will be served. He will not have died in vain.”
The post MTG Joins MAGA Push to Have George Floyd’s Killer Pardoned appeared first on The Daily Beast.
