Donald Trump is no stranger to controversial pardons. He granted clemency to accused war criminals in 2020 and, since returning to the White House in January, has extended the same mercy to over a thousand Capitol rioters, including some convicted of violent crimes, as well as the the founder of Silk Road, an online marketplace for drugs and illegal services, who had been serving a life sentence.
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Now, conservative media personality Ben Shapiro wants the President to turn his attention to Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was convicted in Minnesota of the 2020 killing of George Floyd and who pleaded guilty to two federal civil rights violations, resulting in dual state and federal sentences of over 20 years each, which he is serving concurrently.
On Tuesday, before Shapiro attended Trump’s speech to Congress as a guest of Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, Shapiro posted an open letter to Trump on his site The Daily Wire and launched a petition at PardonDerek.com that claimed Chauvin was “unjustly convicted” for Floyd’s death, which in large part inspired a nationwide wave Black Lives Matter protests. Shapiro asserted: “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.”
“It would be incredibly controversial,” Shapiro said in a Tuesday segment about the pardon petition on his popular eponymous web podcast, “but I think that it’s absolutely necessary.”
Suggesting that the petition has already begun to get attention from those in the halls of power, tech billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk responded to a clip of the segment shared on X, adding: “Something to think about.”
Here’s what to know.
Who is Derek Chauvin?
Chauvin, who is now 48, worked with the Minneapolis Police Department for 19 years before Floyd’s death. In 2020, the Associated Press reported that, based on personnel files, Chauvin had first studied cooking and served in the Army in the late 1990s as a military police officer.
His time with the department prior to the fateful incident was already rife with issues: the New York Times reported in 2020 that Chauvin was reputedly a “tough Dirty Harry” whose performance led to at least 22 complaints or internal investigations—though only one had resulted in disciplinary action.
But Chauvin had also received accolades for his police work. The department reportedly issued him two medals of valor: in 2006 after he opened fire on a stabbing suspect who aimed a shotgun at him and his colleagues, and in 2008 for responding to an armed-man incident. He also received two medals of commendation, per the AP: in 2008 after he and a partner tackled a fleeing suspect with a pistol, and in 2009 for apprehending a group of gang members while working as an off-duty security guard at a Minneapolis nightclub.
On May 25, 2020, Chauvin and three other police officers, responding to reports of the alleged use of a counterfeit $20 bill at a grocery store, encountered Floyd, a 46-year old Black man. In apprehending Floyd, Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes. In videos captured by bystanders, Floyd could be heard saying, “I can’t breathe,” before going limp. Floyd was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
In an interview on Fox News in June 2020, Trump said he “couldn’t really watch” the video of Floyd’s apprehension and, without naming him, said of Chauvin: “That man has some big problems, there’s no question about it—the police officer, what he did.”
In April 2021, Chauvin was convicted by a Minnesota jury of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter, and he received a 22.5-year sentence in June that year.
In December 2021, after an agreement with prosecutors, Chauvin pleaded guilty before a federal court to two civil rights violations, including admitting to kneeing on Floyd’s neck even after he became unresponsive, resulting in Floyd’s death. He received a federal sentence of 21 years, to be served concurrently with his state sentence but in federal prison.
Chauvin attempted to appeal his state conviction, citing how highly-publicized the case was and pressure on the jury, but Minnesota’s appellate court upheld the conviction. He tried to take his appeal to the Supreme Court, but in November 2023, it declined to review his case.
Chauvin moved from a Minnesota state prison to a federal facility in Tucson, Ariz., in August 2022, but in November 2023, he was stabbed 22 times by a fellow inmate. Chauvin was then moved to a “low security” prison in Big Spring, Texas, in August 2024, where he continues to serve his sentences, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, with a scheduled release date of Nov. 18, 2037.
What would a pardon do?
Calls for Trump to pardon Chauvin did not originate with Shapiro. Right-wing figures such as Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec have campaigned for Trump to do so since even before he took office again in January.
But while Shapiro’s petition has received support from some, it’s received pushback from others, notably Floyd’s brother. In a statement to CNN’s Sara Sidner, Philonise Floyd said that if Trump were to pardon Chauvin: “It would hurt us. It is so personal. We saw our brother tortured to death.” Philonise added that it would “set America back 400 years” and that “the ones pushing for this are trying to remove any power that black Americans have to get justice. It is disgusting. Why would you do this? Why would you re-injure this family and America.”
Shapiro and others have suggested that Chauvin was not responsible for Floyd’s death, and that Floyd actually died from a drug overdose. Washington Post reporter Robert Samuels, who co-authored a Pulitzer-winning book on Floyd’s life and death, said this theory is “based on misinformation” in a thread of posts on X.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who oversaw Chauvin’s state prosecution, pointed out to HuffPost that Trump cannot pardon a state conviction. “The only conceivable purpose,” Ellison suggested of the push for a federal pardon, “would be to express yet more disrespect for George Floyd and more disrespect for the rule of law.”
Some conservatives have even flagged that a federal pardon may do Chauvin more harm than good. National Review contributor Andrew McCarthy wrote in a recent column that while he believes Chauvin did not get a fair trial, Chauvin voluntarily pleaded guilty to the federal charges at the time because it afforded him relative safety in federal custody compared to a state prison. “State prisons, populated by many inmates associated with violent gangs, can be extremely perilous for former police officers who worked in the state,” writes McCarthy. “To be sure, any prison is apt to be tough for former cops—criminals are vengeful toward convicted cops who wielded their state power against those criminals on the outside and are now at their mercy.”
