(NEWSMAX) Conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro launched a petition Tuesday asking President Donald Trump to pardon former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is currently in prison for the May 2020 death of George Floyd, the New York Post reported.

Chauvin is serving simultaneous 21-year federal and a 22 1/2-year state sentences at low-security Federal Correctional Institution in Big Spring, Texas. A pardon by Trump would apply to the two federal convictions of violating Floyd’s civil rights, to which Chauvin pleaded guilty in July 2022.

Shapiro launched “Pardon Derek Chauvin” on The Daily Wire website, which he co-founded in 2015, urging Trump to “immediately” pardon Chauvin, whom Shapiro says was “unjustly convicted.”

“Yet the evidence demonstrates that Derek Chauvin did not murder George Floyd,” the petition reads. “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.”

Further, the petition states, “there was no opportunity for blind justice to work” given the “overt pressure” on the jury in the state trial to return a guilty verdict. Shapiro accused Mayor Jacob Frey of pre-judging the outcome of the trial with a $27 million settlement to the Floyd family, one month before Chauvin’s trial concluded with his conviction.

“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 petition read.

As a result, the petition reads, “a man is now rotting in prison.”

In an accompanying video posted on X, Shapiro said a pardon would be “incredibly controversial” but “absolutely necessary.” He called the trial the “railroading” of Chauvin.

“I think it is worthwhile to remember that there is a man who’s rotting in prison because the media decided in the middle of 2020 that they were going to turn a tragic law enforcement stop … into the raison d’être of the entire 2020 election,” Shapiro said in the video.

A jury found Chauvin guilty of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in April 2021. He was sentenced in July 2021 to 22.5 years in prison on those state charges.

Chauvin was stabbed 22 times at Federal Correctional Institution Tucson in Arizona in November 2023, prompting his transfer to Texas.

Floyd died after resisting police officers following a store clerk accusing him of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill on May 25, 2020. Chauvin was convicted for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, a fact Shapiro claims is in dispute.

Chauvin’s maneuver, the maximal restraint technique, was in Minneapolis Police Department training manuals at the time, a fact the trial judge did not allow to be entered as evidence. MRT wasn’t banned by the department until March 2023.

Mark Swanson
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.