Within hours of taking office, President Donald Trump issued an unprecedented raft of pardons, freeing political and ideological allies to convicted insurrectionists and people who violated federal law for protesting abortion clinics. In other cases, Trump’s Department of Justice halted prosecutions for what appear to be nakedly political reasons.
Now, some of Trump’s high-profile supporters want even more. And in one case, the Trump Justice Department appears to have joined an effort to pardon a Trump-supporting county clerk in jail for state charges.
Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro called Tuesday for the pardoning of federal charges for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis Police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020 after kneeling on his neck for roughly 10 minutes outside of a convenience store.
“It would be incredibly controversial but I think incredibly necessary,” Shapiro said in a roughly 3-minute rant on his eponymous podcast.
Shapiro claimed Chauvin was “railroaded” by the justice system and that this was the “inciting event” that set “America’s race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime.” The only way to rectify that, he claimed, was to see Chauvin’s federal convictions wiped away.
At least one high-ranking Trump administration official boosted the effort. “Something to think about,” Elon Musk wrote in a retweet of Shapiro’s post on X, formerly Twitter.
Chauvin was found guilty on state charges of third-degree murder, second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in April 2021, for which he is serving a 22.5 year sentence. The conviction arrived just over a year after the white police officer had pinned Floyd, a Black man, to the ground by putting his knee on Floyd’s neck.
For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, Floyd begged for Chauvin to stop, saying repeatedly through ragged breaths that he could not breathe.
Extensive evidence introduced by state prosecutors at Chauvin’s trial, including testimony from the Minneapolis Police Department’s own use-of-force instructor, established that the technique Chauvin used to restrain Floyd was not one MPD officers are trained to deploy. That same official testified that given how Floyd’s face was being pressed into the pavement, “no force should have been used once he was in that position” whatsoever because the risk of asphyxiating him was clear, NPR reported.
Chauvin also pled guilty to federal civil rights charges, and is serving two concurrent prison sentences.
Notably, in 2021 Chauvin’s lawyers asked a federal judge to ensure that he served his sentence in a federal facility. Experts speculated it was because federal prisons are considered safer than state prisons.
So why pardon Chauvin on the federal charges, thus sending him back to a state facility? An attorney for Chauvin could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
But Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told HuffPost he had a theory.
“The only conceivable purpose would be to express yet more disrespect for George Floyd and more disrespect for the rule of law,” Ellison said. He stressed that “Trump has no power to pardon Chauvin’s state conviction. None.”
That is certainly true, but in one other case, the DOJ is exploring the possibility.
Federal prosecutors made an unusual request on Tuesday when they asked a federal judge to consider releasing 2020 election denier and former Mesa, Colorado, county clerk Tina Peters from state prison after she was sentenced last October to nine years behind bars.
Peters was found guilty of seven felony and three misdemeanor charges for her efforts to criminally breach secure voting machines in Mesa County.
She became a quasi-celebrity on the right and was defiant throughout proceedings in court, including during her sentencing. Peters rambled to the judge overseeing her sentencing for nearly an hour, firing off one conspiracy theory after another about the 2020 election while airing out her own personal grievances.
After listening to her statement, the judge finally told Peters she was “no hero” and that she “abused” her position as clerk.
“You’re a charlatan,” the judge said. “You cannot help but lie as you breathe.”
Peters is appealing both the conviction and sentence, but the Justice Department isn’t content to see that appeals process play out in due course.
In a letter filed on March 3, federal prosecutors say they have “reasonable concerns” about the “exceptionally lengthy sentence” Peters received, and questioned whether denying her bail while she appeals her conviction and sentence was constitutional.
Invoking Trump’s executive order purporting to end the “weaponization of the federal government,” acting assistant Attorney General Yaakov Roth wrote in a letter to the Colorado State attorney general that it was necessary to review whether Peters’ case was “oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
No evidence was introduced in Peters’ case suggesting judicial or prosecutorial misconduct but when Peters was charged and tried, evidence did reveal that she helped Conan Hayes, a pro surfer-turned-election conspiracy theorist, gain unapproved access to a Mesa County Dominion voting machine. Prosecutors said Hayes culled passwords and other sensitive data on Dominion software. The information, they alleged, was sharedwith prominent election denier, avowed Trump ally and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Neither the Colorado attorney general nor an attorney for Peters immediately responded to requests for comment.
Republicans in Colorado are already calling for federal funding for the state to be paused unless Gov. Jared Polis grants her a pardon. The request is a strange one given that there is no federal tie-in to Peters’ case. She was indicted, tried, charged and convicted in state court. Further, the Constitution states that powers to grant federal funding to states is one that only Congress has to use, not the president alone.
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Polis did not immediately return a request for comment.