Elon Musk called for the release of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted in the 2020 murder of George Floyd, writing on X that “Derek Chauvin was unjustly convicted of murder; therefore he should be freed. The facts show that he was not the cause of death, nor did he at any time intend for a death to occur. Whatever else he may be, he is not a murderer.” The post came a day after Chauvin’s legal team filed a new petition seeking to overturn his state conviction and drew more than 10 million views, along with sharp criticism, including from US Rep. Shri Thanedar, who responded, “No wonder your kids hate you.”
Chauvin is currently serving a 22.5-year state sentence for second-degree unintentional murder, on top of a separate federal sentence he’s already serving after pleading guilty to violating Floyd’s civil rights, a plea in which Chauvin himself admitted his knee restraint contributed to Floyd’s death. Musk’s claim that Chauvin “was not the cause of death” runs directly counter to that federal guilty plea.
The Reversal Worth Noting
In 2020, in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, Musk publicly criticized the outcome from the opposite direction, posting that it was “definitely not right that the other officers were charged with nothing” and using the hashtag “#JusticeForGeorge.” Six years later, he’s arguing the officer whose conviction anchored the entire case should never have been convicted at all. Whatever legal argument Chauvin’s team is making in this new petition, most likely a procedural or constitutional claim about how the original trial was conducted, Musk’s post isn’t engaging with that argument. It’s asserting Chauvin didn’t cause Floyd’s death, a factual claim two separate legal proceedings, a state trial and a federal guilty plea from Chauvin himself, have already contradicted.
Context That’s Easy to Miss in the Timeline
Musk’s post lands about five weeks after Wisconsin’s Elections Commission found probable cause, in a 5-1 vote, that his $1 million voter sweepstakes ahead of the 2025 state Supreme Court race violated the state’s election bribery law, a finding referred to the Brown County district attorney’s office, which can still choose to bring charges. That’s a real, ongoing legal exposure for Musk, though it predates this post by more than a month, so it’s worth being careful about assuming direct cause and effect between the two. What’s true regardless of intent is that a highly engaged, maximally polarizing post reliably pulls attention away from whatever else is happening in a public figure’s world, whether or not that’s the purpose behind it.
What do you think? Does Musk’s platform and reach obligate him to more accuracy when he makes claims that contradict a defendant’s own guilty plea, or is this just ordinary political commentary? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on BeezLoop.com!
