A Wednesday New York Post headline momentarily deceives those inclined to optimism. It reads, “Gov. Tim Walz feeds rumor mill about Derek Chauvin pardon, despite Trump saying he knows nothing about it.”
That optimist might think that the Minnesota governor was moved to reconsider Chauvin’s fate, the inspiration being a recent judicial order issued by Hennepin County Judge Edward Wahl. The ruling followed a defamation suit brought by Assistant Minneapolis Police Chief Katie Blackwell.
Blackwell sued Liz Collin of Alpha News and the other parties responsible for her book, They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, And the Death of George Floyd, and her documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis. Collin argued that Blackwell appeared to lie on the witness stand when she claimed Derek Chauvin’s use of force on George Floyd was improvised and unauthorized.
In a comprehensive, illustrated 58-page order, Wahl roundly rejected Blackwell’s suit. Collin and her co-defendants, he wrote, “hit every legal standard necessary to avoid the lawsuit going to trial — including that their questioning of whether Blackwell lied on the witness stand met the legal standard of ‘substantial truth.’”
At question was Blackwell’s response to Exhibit 17, a still image of Chauvin with his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck. When the prosecutor in the spring 2021 trial asked Blackwell how Chauvin’s restraint differed from those the Minneapolis Police Department authorized, Blackwell testified, “I don’t know what kind of improvised position that is. So that’s not what we train.”
As head of training, Blackwell’s testimony had particular weight. She appears, though, to have been following the party line. MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo said at trial about Chauvin’s technique, “That is not part of our policy, that is not what we teach and that should not be condoned.”
It seems likely it was Arradondo who fed this same line to Mayor Jacob Frey, who told the public just two days after Floyd’s death, “That particular technique that was used was not authorized by the MPD. It is not something that officers are trained in on. And should not be used period.”
“[Blackwell’s] answer reasonably invites viewers, jurors, and now the public to conclude that the depicted technique was never trained by MPD.” He added, “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.”
Influencing the judge’s opinion was the fact that 33 former MPD officers who served with Blackwell swore under oath that the restraint used by Chauvin on Floyd was part of department training. Fourteen of those officers accused Blackwell of perjury.
Last month, Wahl dismissed Blackwell’s lawsuit and ordered her to pay the defendants $75,000 in attorney fees. This past week, Blackwell accepted the dismissal of her defamation suit and agreed to pay the $75,000. This story has not gotten nearly the attention it deserves.
Ironically, Gov. Tim Walz was responsible for exposing these lies. He signed the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act in 2024, a law meant “to limit frivolous lawsuits that seek to undermine the public discourse.” This was the first case adjudicated under that law.
Thanks to the law, Walz has very good reason to believe his two top police officials lied under oath to convict Chauvin. Those lies would have been mitigated had the jury been allowed to see the relevant images from the MPD training materials. Unfortunately, Judge Peter Cahill excluded all exculpatory images saying, improbably, there was no evidence Chauvin was trained in the technique.
This is not all Walz knows or should know. The documents filed by former Hennepin County prosecutor Amy Sweasy in a sexual harassment suit dating from August 2021 and a November 2020 exhibit that surfaced in the case of Chauvin partner Tuo Thao offer conclusive evidence that the final autopsy report issued by Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker was totally compromised.
A frightened Baker knew from day one that the autopsy results were exculpatory. As Sweasy testified, “He told me that there were no medical findings that showed any injury to the vital structures of Mr. Floyd’s neck. There were no medical indications of asphyxia or strangulation,”
“Amy,” he asked, “what happens when the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on?” Added Baker, “This is the kind of case that ends careers.’”
Baker saved his career by yielding to threats made by then D.C. Medical Examiner Dr. Roger Mitchell. As Mitchell freely boasted to state attorneys, he coerced Baker into changing the autopsy report. As the states’ memo acknowledges, “Mitchell said neck compression has to be in the diagnosis.”
To assure he got his way, Mitchell called Baker telling him he was about to send an op-ed to the Washington Post critical of Baker’s findings. Said the memo, “Mitchell said, 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.” In his final report, Baker surrendered to the pressure and added “neck compression.” There could have been no murder charge without it.
Finally, Cahill denied Chauvin a change of venue and refused to sequester the jury. He should have done both. “There was extreme premium pressure, yes. The city was burning down,” Sweasy’s former colleague Patrick Lofton said in his deposition. He and Sweasy withdrew from the cases against Chauvin’s colleagues, Thomas Lane, Alex Kueng, and Tuo Thao just a week after Floyd’s death. They did not believe the three officers should be criminally charged.
“I can tell you that everyone that I associate with to any degree, professionally or personally, agreed with our decision,” Lofton testified. He described the pressure on the prosecutors as “insane.” Said Senior Assistant County Attorney Judith Cole in her deposition in the Sweasy suit, “We had a governor who kind of threw us under the bus.”
Now that governor is trying to throw Trump under the bus. Walz isn’t feeding the rumor mill to prepare for a pardon he would give. No, he is feeding the rumor mill to bait President Trump into offering Chauvin a federal pardon, a pardon that would spark the inevitable riots and further endanger Derek Chauvin and his colleagues
“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,” boasted Walz. Knowing what he knows and acting as cravenly as he does, Walz just pretends to be a man. He apparently never learned the rules.
Image: Minnesota Department of Corrections
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