Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison admitted there was no evidence that George Floyd was a victim of a “hate crime” or racial bias.
“I wouldn’t call it that because hate crimes are crimes where there’s an explicit motive and of bias,” Ellison said. “We don’t have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.”
“I will admit, I felt a little bad for the defendant,” Ellison added. “I think he deserved to be convicted. But he’s a human being… I hope we never forget that people who are defendants in our criminal justice system, that they’re human beings. They’re people.”
Then-Attorney General William Barr supported Ellison’s contention. “I think the narrative that the police are on some, you know, epidemic of shooting unarmed Black men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that that’s based on race. The fact of the matter is very rare for an unarmed African American to be shot by a white police officer.”
But the left’s narrative from the very moment of Floyd’s death — by drug overdose, not Chauvin’s knee restraint — was that he was a black man lynched by a white police officer. Black Lives Matter led hundreds of worldwide protests based on Chauvin’s presumed hate crime. Race riots rocked the country. The media engaged in nonstop demagoguery about the white supremacy of the police force. Activists called for defunding and abolishing the “systemically racist” police.
And now Ellison announces that race was not a factor? Imagine the devastation and rage that might have been averted if he and others in authority had insisted on this narrative instead.