(TheIndependentStar.com) – Ben Shapiro has rocked the political landscape by launching a bold campaign urging President Donald Trump to pardon former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
The conservative commentator argues Chauvin’s conviction for George Floyd’s death was a politically-motivated “railroading” that denied him a fair trial.
The case resulted in many Americans seeing for themselves the evident weaponization of the justice system against law enforcement.
Shapiro’s petition calls for President Trump to take immediate action to overturn what he describes as the “defining achievement of the Woke movement.”
The conservative firebrand argues Chauvin faced an impossible situation with a jury under intense pressure to convict regardless of evidence, effectively making any chance of a fair trial impossible.
The petition has already gained significant attention, including from Trump adviser Elon Musk.
The tech mogul commented the initiative was “something to think about” when the campaign was brought to his attention.
In his detailed letter to President Trump, Shapiro carefully dismantled the narrative surrounding Floyd’s death, pointing to critical facts often buried by mainstream media.
“George Floyd was high on fentanyl; he had a significant pre-existing heart condition,” Shapiro noted.
He highlighted how these medical realities were downplayed during trial coverage that overwhelmingly portrayed Chauvin as a racist murderer.
“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,” Shapiro said.
“The inciting event for the BLM riots that caused $2 billion in property damage in the United States and set America’s race relations on their worst footing in my lifetime was, in fact, the railroading of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd,” he added.
Chauvin currently serves a 22.5-year state sentence for second-degree unintentional murder alongside a concurrent 21-year federal sentence for civil rights violations.
A presidential pardon would only affect the federal conviction, still leaving the state conviction intact.
The timing of this petition comes less than a year after Chauvin survived a prison stabbing attack allegedly linked to the Black Lives Matter movement.
This violent incident further confirms the politically charged atmosphere surrounding Chauvin’s case and the ongoing safety risks he faces while incarcerated.
Shapiro’s campaign makes clear that Chauvin’s trial was compromised by external pressures. Jurors faced implicit threats of renewed violence if they failed to deliver a guilty verdict.
“There was massive overt pressure on the [Minnesota] jury to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence or any semblance of impartial deliberation,” Shapiro wrote in his letter to the president.
“Under these circumstances, there was no opportunity for blind justice to work, and a man is now rotting in prison because of it,” Shapiro added.
While the White House has not yet responded to the petition, the effort represents a significant test of President Trump’s commitment to reforming a justice system that many conservatives believe has been weaponized against police officers and political opponents.
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