Elon Musk reposted a video from conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on Tuesday calling for President Donald Trump to pardon the federal conviction of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd.
Musk shares post calling for Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin
If President Donald Trump did pardon Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer would still spend over 10 additional years in prison for his state conviction that includes two counts of murder.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
March 5, 2025 at 12:46AM
“Something to think about,” wrote Musk, who has been acting as an advisor to Trump, in the post on the social media platform X.
In the video Musk shared, Shapiro said pardoning Chauvin for federal charges would be “incredibly controversial, but I think that it’s absolutely necessary.”
Chauvin is serving two concurrent prison sentences for federal and state convictions after he knelt on the neck of Floyd, a Black man, for nine and a half minutes. Floyd’s killing sparked massive protests locally and nationwide calling for police reform and bringing heightened awareness around police brutality against people of color.
Even if Trump pardoned Chauvin’s 20-year federal convictions for violating Floyd’s civil rights, the president cannot pardon or commute Chauvin’s state sentence, which is 22 and a half years.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune that Trump has no power to pardon Chauvin’s state conviction, and that Chauvin would not walk free. He wrote that Chauvin “murdered George Floyd in front of the whole world.”
“The only conceivable purpose would be to express yet more disrespect for George Floyd and more disrespect for the rule of law,” Ellison said.
Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said that if Chauvin was pardoned federally he would be returned to state custody to serve the remainder of his state sentence.
His anticipated release date is Dec. 10, 2035.
A Hennepin County jury found Chauvin guilty in 2021 of three charges, including murder. He pleaded guilty in the federal trial. Senior U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson sentenced the former officer to 245 months in 2022.
The federal guilty plea included an agreement to not challenge his sentence except under a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. Chauvin is still seeking to overturn his federal sentence using that exact argument.
If he was pardoned, it’s possible the state would arrange for Chauvin to stay in an out-of-state prison due to security concerns. Chauvin was stabbed 22 times and was critically injured by another inmate at a federal prison in 2023.
In Minnesota, defendants typically serve two-thirds of their mandated sentence in prison and the rest on supervised release. Chauvin would be expected to serve another five years on supervised probation after his release in 2035.
Liz Sawyer of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.
An FBI forensic accountant testified Tuesday that Aimee Bock cashed in on the fraud scheme by soliciting donations from her site operators.
