The Dems' Chauvin Strategy and How Trump Subverts It

Follow the Perjury Paper Trail to the Minnesota State Attorney's Office

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the point man for the Democrats on the Derek Chauvin case, would love to see President Trump pardon the former Minneapolis police officer. To that end, as the New York Post’s David Propper points out, Walz has been “fanning the flames of speculation that President Trump is planning to pardon Derek Chauvin.” With the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s death just a week away, what better way to distract from the Democrats’ current woes.

Trump, of course, has no authority to pardon Chauvin on state charges. Walz knows this and would welcome the civic unrest that would follow any attempt by Trump to pardon Chauvin on federal charges. Walz could then channel that unrest to advance his own ambitions and help his party reclaim the young and the black who have strayed from the fold.

Said Walz, “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.” All glory to Tampon Tim.

Trump, however, has options other than pardon or retreat. As his people know, Chauvin, his partner Tuo Thao, and their two rookie colleagues, Alex Keung and Thomas Lane, were the victims of the most flagrant abuse of civil rights in recent memory. They know this because the perpetrators of the abuse have left a self-incriminating paper trail. Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, simply has to follow it.

That trail began on May 26, 2020, the day after George Floyd died of cardiac arrest following a prolonged struggle with the four accused officers. On that day, Senior Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Patrick Lofton documented an extraordinary meeting via Microsoft Teams on the cause of Floyd’s death.

What made the meeting extraordinary were the participants. In addition to Lofton, his Hennepin County colleague Amy Sweasy, and two representatives from the State’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, there were four—count ‘em—four FBI agents. Less than 24 hours after Floyd’s death, FBI Director Christopher Wray had signaled his eagerness to federalize the case and scapegoat the officers.

At the center of the meeting’s attention was Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker. Baker made the job much tougher for scapegoat hunters, state and federal. Said Baker, “The autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation. Mr. Floyd did not exhibit signs of petechiae, damage to his airways or thyroid, brain bleeding, bone injuries or internal bleeding.” In sum, there was no evidence of a homicide.

Baker had more bad news. “Mr. Floyd,” he said, “had preexisting health conditions including heavy heart and some coronary artery disease, including at least one artery that was approximately 75% blocked.” Baker had yet to receive the toxicology report. That report would reveal further complications, namely the presence in Floyd’s autopsy blood specimen of Fentanyl, a potent opiate, and methamphetamine, a potent stimulant.

Baker knew this report was bad news for himself as well. As documented in Assistant County Attorney Sweasy’s deposition testimony in a separate sexual harassment suit, Baker called Sweasy later on the day of May 26 and affirmed, “There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation.”

Under oath, Sweasy recalled Baker asking, “‘Amy, what happens when the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on?’” By midday on May 26 thousands had already gathered in Minneapolis to protest Floyd’s “murder.” The riots started that night. ‘This is the kind of case that ends careers,” Baker told Sweasy, and he was righter than he knew.

Three days later — Friday, May 29 — the state filed its initial complaint against Derek Chauvin. To his credit, Baker hung tough despite riots that led, just the night before, to the sacking of a Minneapolis police station. According to the complaint, “The full report of the [medical examiner] is pending but the [medical examiner] has made the following preliminary findings. The autopsy revealed no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation.”

In his deposition for the Sweasy suit, Senior Assistant County Attorney Patrick Lofton attested to the anxiety all participants felt, “There was extreme premium pressure, yes. The city was burning down.” The pressure from outside the office was “insane.” Rather than prosecute Chauvin’s three colleagues, whom Lofton thought to be blameless, he withdrew from the case. So did Sweasy. “I can tell you that everyone that I associate with to any degree, professionally or personally, agreed with our decision,” Lofton added.

Unable to depend on the Hennepin County attorneys, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and his assistants took over the case. They had no obvious scruples. We know this from a memorandum that documented a November 5, 2020, meeting—likely online—that involved four attorneys from Ellison’s office, one from Hennepin County, and, at the center, Dr. Roger Mitchell, the well connected DC medical examiner and deputy mayor.

As Ellison’s office summarized the meeting, Mitchell was stunned when he saw Baker’s preliminary findings on Friday, May 29. So he called Baker. “Mitchell asked what happened, because Mitchell didn’t think it sounded like Baker’s words. Baker said that he didn’t think the neck compression played a part and that he didn’t find petechiae….Mitchell said, I am just calling to lend you support and if you need support, let me know.”

The memorandum continues, “Mitchell thought about it more that weekend, and was going to release an op-ed….Mitchell was expecting to send the op-ed to the Washington Post on Monday afternoon so Mitchell called Baker first to let him know that he was going to be critical of Baker’s findings.” That same weekend, it should be noted, lethal riots raged throughout the country,

On the Monday call, Mitchell, a black activist, warned Baker, “You don’t want to be the medical examiner who tells everyone they didn’t see what they saw. You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room and be wrong.” There was a way out of the jam, Mitchell told Baker—”Neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.” Without it, Baker did not need to be told, there could be no ruling of homicide and thus no murder charge.

Late on that same Monday, Baker’s office sent out a press release that began, “Cause of death: Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.” (Italics added). Following that declaration was “Manner of death: Homicide.” The man who “didn’t think the neck compression played a part” on May 29 suddenly realized on June 2—after explicit threats by Dr. Mitchell—that it did.

The State attorneys knew of these threats months before his attorneys prosecuted Chauvin on state charges in March 2021. They knew, too, before Biden’s DoJ convened a grand jury on federal charges in February 2021. By Mitchell’s own account, he would seem to have threatened or induced Dr. Andrew Baker to lie about critical medical information regarding the cause of death. During his trial, under oath, Baker would finesse the lies enshrined in his autopsy report.

Although the prosecutors interviewed Mitchell on November 5, 2020, the memorandum only came to light in a July 2021 motion filed by Officer Tuo Thao’s attorney Robert Paule. This was four months after Chauvin had been tried and convicted. The State seems to have been buried the Mitchell memo in a last minute document dump during the spring 2021 trial. Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson never had a chance to process its contents. If he had seen the memorandum, Nelson surely would have raised the issue of Mitchell’s coercion at trial, but he did not.

The case against the State of Minnesota only begins with the Mitchell involvement. As I documented in a previous article, in rejecting a defamation law suit brought by Assistant Minneapolis Police Chief Katie Blackwell, Hennepin County Judge Edward Wahl all but accused Blackwell of perjury.

Blackwell had testified at Chauvin’s trial that the restraint technique Chauvin used on Floyd was unauthorized and improvised. Said Wahl of Blackwell’s testimony, “That impression is undermined by evidence in the record showing that MPD training materials from 2018-2019 — the period of Blackwell’s tenure — included images of officers applying knees to the neck or upper back.”

MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo made nearly the identical claim about Chauvin’s technique. Testified Arradondo at trial, ‘That is not part of our policy, that is not what we teach and that should not be condoned.”

On May 7, 2021, the U.S. DoJ indicted Chauvin and his colleagues for constitutional civil rights violations resulting in Floyd’s death. After initially pleading not guilty, Chauvin yielded to the inevitable and entered a guilty plea in December 2021. At that stage, he had resigned himself to securing a less dangerous prison environment. Even that backfired. In November 2024, an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson stabbed him 22 times.

Of course, President Trump could pardon Chauvin and his colleagues on the federal charges, but the ground has not yet been prepared. The public needs to know more. The same media that conspired to hide the truth about Biden’s dementia for four years did just as thorough a job hiding the truth about George Floyd’s death.

Trump might begin by immediately issuing a federal pardon for Lane, Keung, and Thao. Given that the officers are white, black, and Asian respectively, their federal indictments for violating Floyd’s civil rights make little sense. At the same time, the DoJ should convene a grand jury to investigate how the State of Minnesota could have indicted three officers whose obvious innocence led several Hennepin County prosecutors to quit the case. Thao, in fact, is still in prison on state charges five years after Floyd’s death, and all he did was protect his colleagues from an angry crowd.

Once this outrage has been exposed, the doors would be open to investigate the civil rights violations suffered by Chauvin as well. These violations include three suspected perjuries—Baker, Blackwell, Arradondo—one coercion of perjury—Mitchell—the subornation of these perjuries by the State Attorney’s office, the enabling of these perjuries by Judge Peter Cahill, and the failure of the State Attorneys, Attorney General Ellison included, to provide exculpatory evidence to Chauvin’s defense team in a timely manner.

Once this information is aired, Walz will be hard pressed not to pardon Chauvin’s three colleagues. As to Chauvin, Walz may want to cooperate with the DoJ before the paper trial leads to Ellison and maybe even to himself. “What did they know,” asks Harmeet Dhillon of Ellison and Walz, “and when did they know it?”

Assisting me on this article has been my frequent collaborator, Dr. John Dunn, a physician for 50 years and an attorney for 40 years, board certified in legal medicine. Dr. Dunn is a frequent author/lecturer on medical and legal matters.

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