MINNEAPOLIS — During a news conference inside the Oval Office on Friday, President Donald Trump said he has not considered pardoning former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd.

Trump addressed the topic, which began circulating after prominent conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro floated the idea earlier this week and was then amplified in a post on X by Elon Musk.

“No, I haven’t even heard about it,” Trump told reporters when directly asked whether he would contemplate a pardon. “No. I haven’t heard that.”

This isn’t the first time Trump has commented on Chauvin’s actions in the nearly five years since Floyd was murdered.

In May 2020, days after a bystander video showing Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s back and neck spread around the world, Trump struck a somber tone in his reaction to it.

“The death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis was a grave tragedy. It should never have happened,” he said from the Kennedy Space Center following a May 30 rocket launch. “It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger and grief.”

Two days later, in an address at the Rose Garden, Trump said: “All Americans were rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd. My administration is fully committed that, for George and his family, justice will be served. He will not have died in vain.”

At the time, Trump was also widely condemning civil unrest in Minneapolis, which led to millions of dollars in property damage and the destruction of a police precinct. He criticized state and local leadership, including Gov. Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, for failing to swiftly put down the riots in the aftermath.

Over time, momentum built around a narrative in right-wing circles that Chauvin and the three other officers convicted in Floyd’s death were scapegoated by the political left and the media. A petition began circulating to “Pardon Derek.”

Earlier this week, Musk reposted a video from Shapiro espousing views that Trump should pardon Chauvin’s federal conviction, saying that it would be “incredibly controversial, but I think that it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Something to think about,” Musk, who has been acting as an adviser to Trump, wrote in the post on his social media platform X.

Chauvin is serving two concurrent prison sentences for federal and state convictions after he knelt on the neck of Floyd, a Black man, for 9½ 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 22½ years.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told the Minnesota Star Tribune this week that Trump has no power to pardon Chauvin’s state conviction and that Chauvin would not walk free.

“The only conceivable purpose would be to express yet more disrespect for George Floyd and more disrespect for the rule of law,” Ellison said in a statement.

Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said that if Chauvin were 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. Only then would Chauvin be granted supervised probation, which is expected to last an additional five years.

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.

In a CNN interview late Thursday night, former Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, who led the department when Floyd was killed, expressed solidarity with Trump’s early comments denouncing Chauvin’s actions and said he’s not sure why the pardon idea is suddenly gaining steam.

“The facts were that then former officer Chauvin violated department policy. He certainly violated department training. And above all else, he violated our values,” Arradondo told journalist Laura Coates. He noted that Floyd’s family members “don’t need to be retraumatized by this.”

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Louis Krauss of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.

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