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Defeated Trump Denies

Defeated Trump Denies

Since 1845, Election Day in the United States has been the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. In the year 2020 that day was November 3. We didn’t know results at the end of that day and we would not know results for nearly a week…

Final presidential vote totals would be:
Joe Biden: 81,268,867 (51.3%)…306 electoral votes.
Donald Trump: 74,216,747  (46.8%)…232 electoral votes.
We first had to sludge through many days of dissent and denial…

Tuesday 3 November

November 3, 2020: there were thousands of names on ballots all over the United States, but there were really only two: Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Millions had already voted. Some in person and some by mail.

On Tuesday night there were still several key states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, that could not yet complete their count. “Too close to call” became the catchphrase.

Joe Biden asked voter for patience. Donald Trump predicted victory in States where he was ahead, but where thousands of mail in ballots were yet to be counted. Historic numbers of Americans had voted by mail in because of the ongoing COVID pandemic and some States using that method nearly exclusively.

Many more Democrats than Republicans had used the mail. President Trump himself may have been responsible as he had posted more than 70 tweets casting doubt on mail-in voting, referencing voter fraud or “rigged” elections since April. Trump himself had, in the past, used mail-in or absentee ballots.

A Lie Well-stuck to is as Good as the Truth
Defeated Trump Denies

Wednesday 4 November

By Wednesday, the situation was similar. The leads that Trump held in some States dwindled as those mail in ballots were counted. Trump promoted the false notion that those ballots were invalid because election day had already ended. Pennsylvania, a key state, had ruled before Election Day that no mail in ballots could be counted until after Election Day.

Defeated Trump Denies

Thursday 5 November

On November 5, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Trump campaign to stop vote-counting in Pennsylvania. The Trump campaign had alleged that its observers were not given access to observe the vote, but its lawyers admitted during the hearing that its observers were already present in the vote-counting room.

On the same day, Judge James Bass,  Georgia judge,  dismissed a lawsuit by Trump’s campaign that alleged dozens of late ballots were mingled with on-time ballots in Georgia.

The court finds there is no evidence that the ballots referenced in the petition were received after 7 p.m. on Election Day, thereby making those ballots invalid,” Bass said in a ruling.

The same day, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens dismissed a Trump campaign’s lawsuit requesting a pause in vote-counting to allow access to observers. The judge noted that vote-counting had already finished in Michigan and also noted that the official complaint did not state “why”, “when, where, or by whom” an election observer was allegedly blocked from observing ballot-counting in Michigan.

Defeated Trump Denies

Friday 6 November

Although some State regulations required that mail in ballots be received by Election Day itself, some States allowed a longer period. Such States included Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Though counting continued, Joe Biden’s overtook Trump in both Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Though ahead, the Biden’s narrow margin of victory in Georgia automatically requires a recount.

Defeated Trump Denies

Saturday 7 November

The Associated Press, Fox News, and the other major networks call Pennsylvania for Biden, thus putting him above the required 270 electoral votes. Celebrations spontaneously erupt in various “blue” areas, but Trump supporters protest in front of various state capitol buildings across the country.

At the time, Trump was playing golf and later refused to concede. At the same time, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani held a press conference in the parking lot of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a business in Philadelphia. Giuliani announced the president’s intention to litigate over claims of voter fraud.

Defeated Trump Denies

Sunday 8 November

Although the nonpartisan Center for Presidential  Transition released a statement urging Trump to let the transition proceed, Emily W. Murphy, administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA), refused to sign a letter allowing Biden’s transition team to formally begin work.

On Twitter, Trump continued to hype his claims of election fraud. He sent 25 tweets with links to right-wing media supporting him or rumors about the count in some states — many of which were flagged by the platform as disputed.

Defeated Trump Denies

Monday 9 November

President-elect Biden states at a press conferenceThis election is over. It’s time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric that is designed to demonize one another.

Trump continued to file challenging lawsuits in various key States.

Defeated Trump Denies

A Week Later…

Tuesday 10 November

Trump continued his refusal to concede and continued to unsuccessfully challenge the results. Biden said that Trump’s refusal is “an embarrassment, quite frankly … At the end of the day, you know, it’s all going to come to fruition on January 20”

The New York Times reported that it had contacted the offices of the top election officials in at least 45 states and not one of them suspected or had evidence of voting fraud.

The Nevada Supreme Court dismissed the Trump campaign’s appeal challenging Clark County, Nevada’s election processes, ruling that there was no evidence of wrongdoing.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joked in a press conference about preparing for a “second Trump administration,” for which he was later praised by the president.

Thursday 12 November

Two coalitions of federal and state election officials, the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council and the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Council, issued a joint statement saying, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

The Trump administration prevented President-elect Biden from receiving messages from foreign leaders according to State Department officials familiar with the messages.

Friday 13 November

The Third Circuit Court in Wayne County, Michigan rejected a petition by two Republican poll challengers seeking to stop the county’s vote certification, alleging fraud by poll workers. The court ruled that the plaintiffs’ “interpretation” of the events were “incorrect and not credible” and “decidedly contradicted” an election expert that was put forth by the defense.

Seven days after Biden’s win was confirmed , he still did not have access to the Presidential Daily Brief — the highest level of security information–as he was supposed to.

Sunday 15 November

In a series of tweets, Trump stated that Bidenwon because the Election was Rigged”, referencing an unproven conspiracy theory held by right wing groups alleging that voter tabulation machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems had been compromised, resulting in millions of votes for Trump being deleted or switched to Biden. Trump further tweeted that Biden “only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA. I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go.”

Defeated Trump Denies

Two Weeks Later

Tuesday 17 November

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court delivered a 5-2 decision against Trump’s lawsuit alleging that its poll observers were unlawfully restricted from inspecting the counting in Philadelphia.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced that an audit of Georgia’s voting machines had found no evidence of tampering.

The Trump campaign filed a new lawsuit in the Nevada First Judicial District Court alleging that “fraud and abuse renders the purported results of the Nevada election illegitimate” and thus either Trump “be declared the winner of the Election in Nevada” or that the results be annulled and no Nevada winner certified.

Wednesday 18 November

The Trump campaign filed a third version of its federal lawsuit over the Pennsylvania results, claiming that 1.5 million mail-in or absentee votes in seven counties should be thrown out and thus either he should be named the winner in Pennsylvania or the Pennsylvania Legislature should be given the authority to appoint presidential electors pledged to Trump.

Thursday 19 November

The Maricopa County Superior Court dismissed the Arizona Republican Party’s lawsuit seeking to order an audit of the county’s ballots.

US District Judge Steven D. Grimberg dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit seeking to delay the certification of Georgia’s election results, ruling, “It is well established that garden-variety election disputes do not rise to the level of a constitutional deprivation. The fact that [Trump] didn’t win doesn’t rise to the level of harm“.

Friday 20 November

Nevada District Court Judge Gloria Sturman dismissed a lawsuit brought by conservative activist Sharron Angle and her organization, the Election Integrity Project seeking to nullify the entire Nevada November election, not just the presidential results. Sturman noted in her ruling that “if the election was thrown out there would be no one holding office, including me”

Saturday 21 November

US District Judge Matthew W. Brann dismissed the Trump’s campaign lawsuit seeking to block the certification of the Pennsylvania results, ruling that the president’s legal team merely presented “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” that were “unsupported by evidence.

Sunday 22 November

Michael Steel, a spokesperson for Dominion Voting Systems, defended the company’s voting machines during an appearance on Fox News Sunday, saying, “It is not physically possible for our machines to switch votes from one candidate to the other.”

Trump appealed to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking to overturn Judge Brann’s previous day ruling and block the certification of the Pennsylvania results.

Three Weeks Later

Tuesday 24 November

President Trump, Emily Murphy, and the GSA reversed course and formally allowed Biden’s transition team to have access to the required federal resources.

Minnesota, Nevada, and Pennsylvania certify their respective election results, with Biden as the official winner in all three states

Thanksgiving 26 November

During a Thanksgiving Day press conference, his first such presser since the election, Trump admitted that he would leave the White House if Biden were officially declared the winner of Electoral College, but added, “If they do, they made a mistake … It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede“.

Friday 27 November

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump campaign’s challenge to the Pennsylvania election results, ruling that the “campaign’s claims have no merit … Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here”.

The recount in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin ended with Biden getting a net increase of 132 votes.

Monday 30 November

Arizona and Wisconsin certified their respective election results, with Biden as the official winner in both states

Defeated Trump Denies

December 2020

A month later

Tuesday 1 December: the Trump campaign filed a new lawsuit in the Wisconsin Supreme Court seeking to overturn the state’s certified election results.

In an interview with the Associated Press, US Attorney General William Barr stated that the Department of Justice  had not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the election.

Wednesday 2 December

Trump posted a pre-recorded video address on Facebook, repeating his allegations of voter fraud.

Thursday 3 December

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch bid by Republican challengers to halt further action on the certification of the state’s election results.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear Trump’s latest lawsuit seeking to overturn the state’s certified election results, stating that the case needed to go through state’s lower courts first. (see Dec 14 below)

Friday 4 December

The Michigan Court of Appeals rejected the Trump campaign’s appeal to overturn a lower court’s previous decision, ruling that “the only valid recourse at the time would have been to request a recount, but the window to do so had passed … Because plaintiff failed to follow the clear law in Michigan relative to such matters, their action is moot.”

The Minnesota Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by a group of Minnesota Republicans seeking to stop the certification of the state’s election results and order a full recount. The ruling cited the late filing of the petition on November 24, just hours before the elections results were officially certified, and that two of their key arguments regarded events and policies that took place before early voting began on September 18.

With California certifying its election results, Biden officially clinched enough pledged electors needed for the December 14 Electoral College vote to capture the presidency.

Monday 7 December

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger officially re-certified Georgia’s election results following the second state recount completed during the previous week, still showing Biden winning the state.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in order to invalidate the presidential election results in those states; the lawsuit, Texas v. Pennsylvania, is filed with the U.S. Supreme Court .

Defeated Trump Denies

Five Weeks Later

Tuesday 8 December

The Nevada Supreme Court unanimously ruled to dismiss the Trump’s campaign’s appeal seeking to overturn the state’s election results, affirming the Nevada First Judicial District Court’s ruling that they failed to identify any direct “unsupported factual findings”

Wednesday 9 December

U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa tossed out a lawsuit by Arizona voters, the last one against the state’s election results, citing “baseless claims.”

Plaintiffs append over 300 pages of attachments, which are only impressive for their volume,” Humetewa said. “The various affidavits and expert reports are largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.”

U.S. District Judge Pamela Pepper dismissed  Trump team attorney Sidney Powell’s lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission, stating that the “federal court has no authority or jurisdiction to grant the relief the remaining plaintiff seeks.

Friday 11 December

The U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned order declining to hear Texas v. Pennsylvania on the basis that Texas lacked standing under Article Three of the Constitution: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections“. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, partially dissents, writing that the Court was duty-bound to hear the case, referencing Arizona v. California: “I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.

Saturday 12 December

U.S. District Judge Brett Ludwig dismissed the Trump campaign’s lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission, ruling that the allegations “fail as a matter of law and fact.”

Trump supporters held rallies in Washington, D.C. in front of the Supreme Court, the Capitol, and the Department of Justice.

Sunday 13 December

In an interview with Fox News that aired on Sunday and was taped on December 12,  President Trump said, “It’s not over. We keep going.  And we’re going to continue to go forward.”

Defeated Trump Denies

Six Weeks Later

Monday 14 December
Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied President Trump’s attempt to invalidate more than 200,000 votes in the state’s two biggest Democratic bastions for the second time this month.

The ruling ends the president’s efforts to overturn the result of the election just hours before the Electoral College is set to cast the state’s 10 votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

In a 4-3 decision, the conservative-leaning court rejected the Trump campaign’s attempt to throw out votes in Milwaukee County and Dane County, which includes Madison.

Electoral College

Defeated Trump Denies

December 14: the NY Times reported that Joseph R. Biden Jr. was affirmed as the president-elect as members of the Electoral College pushed him past the 270 threshold to win the White House, all but ending a disruptive chapter in American history in which President Trump sought to use legal challenges and political pressure to overturn the results of a free and fair election.

Russia

The president-elect passed the threshold after California cast its 55 votes for Biden, capping a day marked by heightened security in battleground states and an unusual level of scrutiny for what is normally a formal, procedural affair.

December 15: NPR reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had congratulated Joe Biden on his win in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, becoming one of the last world leaders to do so.

“For my part, I am ready for interaction and contacts with you,” Putin said in his message to Biden, according to a statement from the Kremlin.

December 28, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden that his transition team had encountered “roadblocks” from political leaders at both the Defense Department and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and called on the Trump administration to provide more information to avoid hiccups that adversaries could take advantage of during the transfer of power.

“My team needs a clear picture of our force posture around the world and our operations to deter our enemies,” Biden said in remarks following a meeting with national security and foreign policy advisers in Wilmington, Del. “We need full visibility into the budget planning underway at the Defense Department and other agencies in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch-up that our adversaries may try to exploit.”

“We have encountered roadblocks from the political leadership at the department of defense and the Office of Management and Budget. Right now, we just aren’t getting all of the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,” he continued. “It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.” [The Hill article]

Defeated Trump Denies

2021

Friday 1 January

Judge Jeremy D. Kernodle of the Eastern District of Texas dismissed a lawsuit led by President Trump’s allies in Congress that aimed to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election, dealing a blow to lawmakers’ last-ditch effort to challenge President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.

Kernodle ruled that Republican lawmakers, led by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, lacked the proper standing to sue Mr. Pence in the matter. The lawsuit challenged the more than century-old law that governs the Electoral College process, in an attempt to expand an otherwise ceremonial role into one with the power to reject electoral votes that were cast for Mr. Biden. [NYT article]

Saturday 3 January

Vice President Mike Pence signaled support for a futile Republican bid to overturn the election in Congress on January 5, after 11 Republican senators and senators-elect said that they would vote to reject President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory when the House and Senate met to formally certify it.

The announcement by the senators — and Pence’s move to endorse it — reflected a groundswell among Republicans to defy the unambiguous results of the election and indulge President Trump’s attempts to remain in power with false claims of voting fraud.

Every state in the country had certified the election results after verifying their accuracy, many following postelection audits or hand counts. Judges across the country, and a Supreme Court with a conservative majority, had rejected nearly 60 attempts by Trump and his allies to challenge the results. [NYT article]

Defeated Trump Denies
Sunday 3 January 
Trump asks to “find” some votes

President Trump demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election, and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense,” during an hourlong telephone conversation with him on Saturday, according to audio excerpts from the conversation.

Mr. Trump, who had spent almost nine weeks making false conspiracy claims about his loss to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., told Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, that Mr. Raffensperger should recalculate the vote count so Mr. Trump would win the state’s 16 electoral votes.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr. Trump said on the call, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post, which published excerpts from the audio on its website Sunday. “Because we won the state.”

President Trump demanded that Georgia’s Republican secretary of state “find” him enough votes to overturn the presidential election, and vaguely threatened him with “a criminal offense,” during an hourlong telephone conversation with him on Saturday, according to audio excerpts from the conversation.

Mr. Trump, who has spent almost nine weeks making false conspiracy claims about his loss to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., told Brad Raffensperger, the state’s top elections official, that Mr. Raffensperger should recalculate the vote count so Mr. Trump would win the state’s 16 electoral votes.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Mr. Trump said on the call, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post, “Because we won the state.” [NYT article]

US defense secretaries

All 10 living former US defense secretaries declared that the US presidential election is over in a forceful public letter published in The Washington Post as President Donald Trump continued to deny his election loss to Joe Biden.

The letter — signed by Dick Cheney, James Mattis, Mark Esper, Leon Panetta, Donald Rumsfeld, William Cohen, Chuck Hagel, Robert Gates, William Perry and Ashton Carter — amounted to a remarkable show of force against Trump’s subversion efforts just days before Congress was set to count Electoral College votes.
Our elections have occurred. Recounts and audits have been conducted. Appropriate challenges have been addressed by the courts. Governors have certified the results. And the electoral college has voted. The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived,” the group wrote. [CNN article]
Defeated Trump Denies

Nine Weeks Later

January 6 Insurrection

January 6, 2021: on the day that the joint Houses of Congress convened to confirm the election of Joe Biden, a mob of President Trump’s supporters surged into the U.S. Capitol with relative ease.

Armed with pro-Trump banners, the rioters far outnumbered and swiftly overwhelmed the U.S. Capitol Police as they charged up the steps, smashed windows, broke into the Senate chamber and occupied offices, including the one belonging to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

More than 50 people were arrested, at least a dozen police were injured, and officers confiscated guns, pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. [NPR story]

January 7, the day after

Ending a day of public silence, Trump posted a 2½-minute video on Twitter denouncing the mob attack in a way that he had refused to do a day earlier. Reading dutifully from a script prepared by his staff, he declared himself “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” and told those who broke the law that “you will pay.”

While he did not give up his false claims of election fraud, he finally conceded defeat. “A new administration will be inaugurated on Jan. 20. My focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power. This moment calls for healing and reconciliation.”

Trump initially resisted taping the video, agreeing to do it only after aides pressed him and he appeared to suddenly realize he could face legal risk for prodding the mob, coming shortly after the chief federal prosecutor for Washington left open the possibility of investigating the president for illegally inciting the attack by telling supporters to march on the Capitol and show strength. [NYT article]

Resignations

Following the insurrection, several Trump administration officials announced that they were resigning

Defeated Trump Denies

Social Media Blowback

By January 11, several major social media platforms banned or restricted Donald Trump:

  • Reddit: banned the subreddit group “r/DonaldTrump,
  • Twitch: disabled Trump’s channel, citing the move as a “necessary step” to protect its community and “prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence.”
  • Shopify: ook down two online stores affiliated with Trump — his organization and his campaign’s merchandise sites — for violating its policies on supporting violence.
  • Twitter: announced  the platform will permanently ban President Trump’s account effective immediately.
  • Google: pulled Parler, a social media app for conservatives and far-right extremists.
  • YouTube: accelerated its enforcement of election misinformation and voter fraud claims against Trump and other channels. 
  • Facebook & Instagram:  banned Donald Trump from posting on his Facebook accounts for at least two weeks until the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden was complete.
  • Snapchat: disabled Trump’s Snapchat account because it believed the account promoted and spread hate and incited violence.
  • Tictok: removed content violations and redirected hashtags like #stormthecapitol and #patriotparty to its community guidelines.
  • Apple: threatened to remove right-wing-friendly social media app Parler from its App Store if Parler did not lay out a plan to moderate its content.
  • Discord: banned server The Donald
  • Pinterest: had been limiting hashtags related to pro-Trump topics such as #StopTheSteal since around the November election.
  • Stripe: would no longer process payments for President Trump’s campaign, which continued to fundraise.

Political Contribution Blowback

According to the DealBook newsletter, a number of companies reviewed political contributions via their corporate political action committees, a

  • Morgan Stanley suspended all PAC contributions to members of Congress who did not vote to certify the results of the Electoral College, a spokesman said.

  • Marriott said it would pause donations from its PAC “to those who voted against certification of the election,” a spokeswoman told DealBook. She did not say how long the break would last or how the hotel chain would decide when to resume donations.

  • The chemicals giant Dow said it was suspending all PAC contributions “to any member of Congress who voted to object to the certification of the presidential election.” The suspension will last for one election cycle — two years for representatives and up to six years for senators.

  • Shopify terminated online stores affiliated with President Trump. “Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause,” the company said in a statement.

  • Hallmark requested the return of campaign contributions its PAC made to Senators Josh Hawley Missouri and Roger Marshall of Kansas, both of whom voted against certifying the presidential election results. “Hallmark believes the peaceful transition of power is part of the bedrock of our democratic system, and we abhor violence of any kind,” the company said in a statement. “The recent actions of Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall do not reflect our company’s values.”

Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boston Scientific and Commerce Bancshares are taking a similar, targeted approach to donation freezes. The newsletter Popular Information tracked  the responses of these and other companies that donated to lawmakers who challenged the election result. [NYT article]

Defeated Trump Denies

More Court Refusals

Monday 11 January: in a series of unsigned orders, the Supreme Court refused requests from President Trump and his allies to expedite consideration of various challenges to the results of the presidential election. The court would consider whether to hear the cases in the ordinary course in the next month or two, but the orders in effect made the challenges moot.

As is the court’s custom, the orders gave no reasons. There were no dissents noted.

Trump had hoped that the court, which included three of his appointees, would overturn the results of the election. But the court, notably in a terse order rejecting an audacious lawsuit in which Texas sought to sue four other states, has consistently rejected the requests. [NYT article]

Defeated Trump Denies

Wednesday 10 January 2021

Defeated Trump Denies

Prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia initiated a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results, including a phone call he made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Mr. Trump pressured him to “find” enough votes to help him reverse his loss.

fani Willis, the recently elected Democratic prosecutor in Fulton County, sent a letter to numerous officials in state government, including Mr. Raffensperger, requesting that they preserve documents related to Trump’s call, according to a state official with knowledge of the letter. The letter explicitly stated that the request was part of a criminal investigation, said the official, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters.

The inquiry cames as Trump faced a his second impeachment trial. [NYT article]

Defeated Trump Denies

Seizing Voting Machines

February 1, 2022: the NY Times reported that “…six weeks after Election Day, with his hold on power slipping, President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted him to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states, three people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s acting deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority to audit or impound the machines.”

Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, Defeated Trump Denies, 

November 2020 COVID 19

November 2020 COVID 19

November 2020 COVID 19

November 2020 COVID 19

November 2: Dr. Deborah L. Birx, who had carefully straddled the line between science and politics as she helped lead the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, delivered a stark private warning telling White House officials that the pandemic was entering a new and “deadly phase” that demanded a more aggressive approach.

The warning, contained in a private memo to White House officials as the nation’s daily coronavirus caseload had broken records and approached 100,000, amounted to a direct contradiction of President Trump’s repeated — and inaccurate — assertions that the pandemic is “rounding the corner.”

In the memo, Dr. Birx suggested that Mr. Trump and his advisers were spending too much time focusing on preventing lockdowns and not enough time on controlling the virus. [NYT article]

1,213,324 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 3: 47,434,036 case worldwide; 1,213,324 deaths worldwide

237,009 COVID Deaths USA

November 3:  9,568,275 cases in the USA; 237,009 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19
COVID Advisory Panel

November 9: President-elect Joe Biden named Dr. Rick Bright, a former top vaccine official in the Trump administration who submitted a whistle-blower complaint to Congress, as a member of a Covid-19 panel to advise him during the transition.

Biden had already revealed the three co-chairs of the panel: Dr. Vivek Murthy, a surgeon general under former President Barack Obama, who has been a key Biden adviser for months and is expected to take a major public role; David Kessler, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration for the first President George Bush and President Bill Clinton; and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, a professor of public health at Yale University.

The panel also included Dr. Zeke Emanuel, an oncologist and the chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Emanuel is the brother of Rahm Emanuel, who served in the Obama administration, and has been a high-profile advocate of a more aggressive approach to the virus; Dr. Luciana Borio, a vice president at In-Q-Tel; Dr. Atul Gawande, a professor of surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Dr. Celine Gounder, a clinical assistant professor at the N.Y.U. Grossman School of Medicine; Dr. Julie Morita, the executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Dr. Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota; Loyce Pace, the executive director and president of Global Health Council; Dr. Robert Rodriguez and Dr. Eric Goosby, both professors at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

Vaccine progress

November 9: drug maker Pfizer announced that an early analysis of its coronavirus vaccine trial suggested the vaccine was robustly effective in preventing Covid-19

Eli Lilly

November 9: the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization of a Covid-19 antibody treatment made by Eli Lilly that is similar to a therapy given to President Trump shortly after he contracted the coronavirus.

The decision, announced by the agency, was likely to be seen as a valuable tool to treat patients with Covid-19 at a time when the pandemic was raging across the United States, hospitals were overwhelmed and doctors had few options to treat the disease. [NYT article]

1,213,324 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 9: 51,041,400 case worldwide; 1,266,079 deaths worldwide

243,857 COVID Deaths USA

November 9:  10,319,131 cases in the USA; 243,825 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

Frightening New Highs

November 12: Covid-19 hospitalizations in the United States hit an all-time high of 61,964 and new daily cases passed 139,000 for the first time, as the raging pandemic continued to shatter record after record and strain medical facilities.

The number of people hospitalized with the coronavirus, tallied by the Covid Tracking Project, had more than doubled since September, and exceeded the peak reached early in the pandemic, when 59,940 hospitalized patients were reported on April 15. A second peak in the summer fell just short of matching that record.

Those spikes in April and July lasted only a few days and quickly subsided, but as winter approaches experts did not expect that this time. [NYT story]

November 2020 COVID 19

1,304,938 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 13: 53,467,371 case worldwide; 1,304,938 deaths worldwide

248,835 COVID Deaths USA

November 13:  10,918,789 cases in the USA; 248,835 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

November 16: the New York Times reported that drugmaker Moderna announced that its coronavirus vaccine was 94.5 percent effective, based on an early look at the results from its large, continuing study.

Researchers said the results were better than they had dared to imagine. But the vaccine will not be widely available for months, probably not until spring.

November 2020 COVID 19

1,326,589 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 16: 54,953,213 case worldwide; 1,326,589 deaths worldwide

251,901 COVID Deaths USA

November 16:  11,367,214 cases in the USA; 251,901 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

November 18: NPR News announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved the first COVID-19 diagnostic at-home self-test provided rapid results.

The Lucira COVID-19 All-In-One Test Kit was a molecular single-use test the company said on its website.

While COVID-19 diagnostic tests have been authorized for at-home collection, this is the first that can be fully self-administered and provide results at home,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said in a statement.

November 2020 COVID 19

November 21: as cases across the country continued to rise, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the experimental antibody treatment given to President Trump shortly after he had tested positive for the coronavirus, giving doctors another option to treat patients

The treatment, made by the biotech company Regeneron, was a cocktail of two powerful antibodies that had shown promise in early studies at keeping the infection in check, reducing medical visits for patients who get the drug early in the course of their disease.

On November 9, the FDA had given emergency approval to Eli Lilly for a similar treatment. [NYT article]

1,326,589 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 22: 58,764,574 case worldwide; 1,390,454 deaths worldwide

261,932 COVID Deaths USA

November 22:  12,471,316 cases in the USA; 261,932 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

> One Million

November 25: for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak hit the United States, the country added more than one million cases in each of the past two consecutive weeks. Covid deaths, which lag reported cases by weeks, were also at a level not seen since the spring.

Some epidemiologists projected that the number of deaths in the coming weeks would exceed the spring peak, in spite of improved treatment. [NYT article]

November 2020 COVID 19

1,417,840 COVID Deaths Worldwide

November 25: 60,240,006 case worldwide; 1,417,840 deaths worldwide

265,986 COVID Deaths USA

November 25:  12,958,805 cases in the USA; 265,986 deaths in the USA.

November 2020 COVID 19

Previous and subsequent COVID-19 posts

Police Kill George Floyd

Police Kill George Floyd

George Floyd: October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020
Police Kill George Floyd
Not everyone thought the police were at fault

With the story of Ahmaud Arbery still in the news, George Floyd, another black man, was killed while detained by police regarding a possible forgery.

Monday 25 May 2020

Monday 25 May 2020: According to a statement from the Minneapolis Police Department, officers were called to Cup Foods to investigate reports of a forgery.

George Floyd, 46, who was suspected of attempting to spend a counterfeit $20 bill, was in his car when police arrived and ordered him to exit the vehicle.

According to police spokesman John Elder, Floyd “physically resisted officers. Officers were able to get the suspect into handcuffs and noted he appeared to be suffering medical distress.”

A Facebook user posted a video in which Floyd, 46, was killed by police outside the Cup Foods convenience store in Minneapolis, writing: “They killed him right in front of Cup Foods over south on 38th and Chicago! No type of sympathy.”

The video showed a white police officer kneeling on a black man’s neck in the midst of the arrest. The man, Floyd, repeatedly tells the cop that he can’t breathe. After several minutes, the man ceases to move, yet the officer still bears down on his neck. Bystanders call for the officer to let the man go. “He’s not even resisting arrest right now, bro,” one says, while another informs the officer that Floyd’s nose is bleeding and that he looks like he’s about to pass out.

Another video shows the incident from a different angle:

Police Kill George Floyd

Tuesday 26 May

Tuesday 26 May: the FBI and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension began investigating the incident, and the four officers involved were fired. “This is the right call,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said on Twitter. “Being Black in America should not be a death sentence,” he wrote on Facebook. “For five minutes, we watched a white officer press his knee into a black man’s neck. Five minutes. When you hear someone calling for help, you’re supposed to help. This officer failed in the most basic, human sense. What happened on Chicago and 38th last night is awful. It was traumatic. It serves as a reminder of how far we have to go.”

Police Kill George Floyd

Wednesday 27 May

Wednesday 27 May: the Minneapolis police department revealed the names of the officers fired after the incident: Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao, and J. Alexander Kueng (via the New York Times). Mayor Frey called for prosecutors to file federal charges against the men at a press conference. “I want to see a charge take place,” he said. “I want to see justice for George Floyd.”

Police Kill George Floyd

Thursday 28 May

Thursday 28 May: prosecutors continued to investigate whether or not to charge Derek Chauvin. The lack of action from authorities, however, accelerated protests near the Minneapolis Police Department’s Third Precinct. Participants eventually set fire to the police precinct station, according to the New York Times. Protests also broke out in New York, Denver, Phoenix and Columbus, Ohio. Demonstrators also gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, to protest the death of Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was shot by police while in her own home in March.

NBC reported that Chauvin had been the subject of several police-conduct reports — at least 12 since he started in 2001. Still, according to Minneapolis’ Communities United Against Police Brutality database — which has been cited in various reports on Chauvin’s record — he has received only a few verbal reprimands. Most of the complaints in the database are listed as “closed.”

Police Kill George Floyd

Friday 29 May

THUGS

Friday, 29 May: early in the morning, President Donald Trump denounced protesters, tweeting: “These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”

Twitter flagged the tweet with a message reading: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence. However, Twitter had determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

This was the first time Twitter had flagged one of the President’s tweets as questionable. The move cames days after the platform added a fact-check option to some of Trump’s false tweets about mail-in voting, prompting him to threaten to close down Twitter. He then signed an executive order aimed at bolstering the government’s ability to regulate social media sites

Undeterred, the president spent the morning deriding the platform on Twitter, tweeting in the early afternoon: “The National Guard has arrived on the scene. They are in Minneapolis and fully prepared. George Floyd will not have died in vain. Respect his memory!!!”

Protesters across the country blocked highways and clashed with the police

The NY Times reported: chanting “Hands up! Don’t shoot” and “I can’t breathe,” thousands of protesters gathered in cities across the country on Friday night .

  • A large crowd in Washington chanted outside the White House, prompting the Secret Service to temporarily lock down the building. Video on social media showed demonstrators knocking down barricades and spray-painting other buildings.

  • A march in Houstonwhere Mr. Floyd grew up, briefly turned chaotic as the windows of a police S.U.V. were smashed and at least 12 protesters were arrested. As a standoff continued, the police shut all roads into and out of downtown. “We don’t want these young people’s legitimate grievances and legitimate concerns to be overshadowed by a handful of provocateurs and anarchists,” the city’s police chief, Art Acevedo, said in an interview.

  • Images from news helicopters above San Jose, Calif., showed protesters throwing objects at police officers, blocking a major freeway and setting fires downtown. Mayor Sam Liccardo said in an interview that he watched from City Hall as a peaceful protest — what he called people “expressing their righteous outrage on the injustice in Minneapolis” — turned violent.

  • Demonstrators in Los Angeles blocked the 110 Freeway, marching through downtown and around Staples Center. Local television footage showed police officers clashing with a crowd suspected of vandalizing a patrol car. By 9:30 p.m., L.A.P.D. had declared all of downtown to be an unlawful assembly and was warning residents of the loft districts to stay inside.

  • The police said a 19-year-old man was killed in Detroit after someone opened fire into a crowd of demonstrators late Friday. Earlier, a small group gathered outside Police Headquarters, declaring “Black is not a crime.” The demonstration swelled to more than 1,000 protesters, who blocked traffic while marching on major thoroughfares.

  • In downtown Dallas, protesters and the police clashed during a demonstration blocks from City Hall. Protesters blocked the path of a police vehicle and then started banging on its hood. Officers eventually responded with tear gas, and a flash-bang was later heard.

  • In Portland, Ore., demonstrators broke into the Multnomah County Justice Center and lit a fire inside the building late Friday night, authorities said.

  • Hundreds of protesters converged on Civic Center Park in Denver, waving signs and chanting as Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” played over a loudspeaker. Some thrust fists in the air and scrawled messages on the ground in chalk, according to a news broadcast.

  • Protesters in Milwaukee briefly shut down part of a major highway, according to WTMJ-TV, and demonstrators shouted “I can’t breathe” — echoing Mr. Floyd’s anguished plea and the words of Eric Garner, a black man who died in New York police custody in 2014.

Police Kill George Floyd

Saturday into Sunday

A day of frustration turns into a night of fury

Saturday 30 May:  the NY Times reported that a largely peaceful day of protests descended into a night of chaos, destruction and sporadic violence overnight Saturday as tens of thousands of people poured into streets across the United States to express anger and heartbreak over the death of yet another black man at the hands of the police.

On Sunday morning, the authorities were still sorting through the smoldering wreckage as the vast scope of the unrest came into sharper focus.

Squad cars had been set on fire in Philadelphia, stores were looted in Los Angeles, police officers in Richmond, Va., were injured and hospitalized, and at least one person was killed in Indianapolis, where a deputy police chief said the department had received so many reports of shots fired that they had lost count.

Sunday 31 May

Continued Protests

May 31: NPR reported that protesters staged large-scale demonstrations across the country expressing outrage at the death of Floyd and, more broadly, anger at police brutality. Some cities, including Minneapolis, Atlanta and Seattle, saw clashes with police, buildings and cars set afire, and looting.

By evening, many demonstrations had given way to another night of violence and destruction, with protesters ignoring curfews imposed in dozens of cities. Police used tear gas and stun grenades and fired rubber bullets in attempts to disperse the crowds.

Police Kill George Floyd

Monday 1 June

Autopsies conflict

June 1: The criminal complaint supporting a murder charge for the officer, which referred to the Hennepin County medical examiner’s preliminary findings, said the autopsy had discounted traumatic asphyxia or strangulation as the cause of Mr. Floyd’s death.

Lawyers representing his family presented a very different version of how Mr. Floyd died. In their telling, three officers on the scene killed Mr. Floyd and should be held criminally responsible.

The private autopsy by doctors hired by Mr. Floyd’s family determined that he died not just because of the knee on his neck — held there by the officer, Derek Chauvin — but also because of two other officers who helped pin him down by applying pressure on his back.

The cause of death, according to the private autopsy, was mechanical asphyxia and the manner of death was homicide.

All three officers were fired last week, as was a fourth officer at the scene. [NYT article]

Trump

June 1: in his first remarks from the White House since massive protests have swept the country, President Trump said  that the looting and violent demonstrations in reaction to the death of George Floyd in police custody were “acts of domestic terror.”

Speaking in the Rose Garden as protesters and law enforcement held a tense standoff outside, Mr. Trump said he planned for a police and law enforcement presence to “dominate the streets” and said he would respond with an “overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled.”

Afterwards, police officers used tear gas and flash grenades to clear out the crowd so Mr. Trump could visit the nearby St. John’s Church, where there had been a parish house basement fire Sunday night. The president stood in front of the boarded up church posing for photographs with a Bible, after the police dispersed peaceful protesters.

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington criticized the president’s church visit. She said she was “outraged” that Mr. Trump went to the church “after he threatened to basically rain down military force.”

“The president used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without even asking us, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for,” she said in an interview. [NYT article]

Monday night

June 2: tens of thousands of protesters began another week of demonstrations and disturbances, returning to the streets of cities around the country despite curfew orders, threats of arrest and the words of the brother of George Floyd, who made an emotional plea for the destruction to end.

Police Kill George Floyd

Wednesday 3 June

Less violence

June 3: the NY Times reported that  for an eighth day and night, tens of thousands of people staged peaceful protests and impassioned marches across the United States, while the widespread destruction and looting that had followed demonstrations in recent days was largely absent.

President Trump called on states to bring in the military to restore order and combat “lowlifes and losers,” as an infantry battalion from Fort Bragg was dispatched to the nation’s capital as part of a broader show of force. But governors resisted the president’s entreaties, instead bolstering the police presence, changing tactics and imposing curfews to prevent people from using the protests as cover to wreak mayhem.

While demonstrators in many cities defied curfews, they did so peacefully.

No Active Duty Troops

June 3: responding to President’s Trump call for the military,  Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said that he did not think the current state of unrest in American cities warranted the deployment of active-duty troops to confront protesters.

In a Pentagon news conference, Mr. Esper said ordering active-duty troops to police American cities should be a “last resort and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.” He said that, for now, this was not warranted.

Police Kill George Floyd

Minneapolis Police Use of Force

June 3: according to the Minneapolis’s own figures , about 20 percent of its population of 430,000 is black, but when the police get physical — with kicks, neck holds, punches, shoves, takedowns, Mace, Tasers or other forms of muscle — nearly 60 percent of the time the person subject to that force is black.

Since 2015, the Minneapolis police have documented using force about 11,500 times. For at least 6,650 acts of force, the subject of that force was black.

By comparison, the police have used force about 2,750 times against white people, who make up about 60 percent of the population.

All of that means that the police in Minneapolis used force against black people at a rate at least seven times that of white people during the past five years.

Four criminal complaints

June 3: Minnesota Public Radio reported that criminal complaints were formally filed against Derek Chauvin, Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas K. Lane.

According to new court documents, in addition to earlier charges officer Derek Chauvin now faces a charge of second-degree murder.  Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas K. Lane, the three other former Minneapolis police officers who were involved in George Floyd’s death faced charges of aiding and abetting murder.

All four police officers were fired one day after Floyd died on Memorial Day. [NPR report]

Police Kill George Floyd

Maurice Lester Hall

June 4: the NY Times reported that Maurice Lester Hall, the longtime friend of George Floyd who was in the passenger seat of Floyd’s car when he was arrested said that Floyd had tried to defuse the tensions with the police and did not resist.

“He was, from the beginning, trying in his humblest form to show he was not resisting in no form or way,” said Hall, 42, who was taken into custody in Houston on Monday and interrogated overnight by Minnesota state investigators, according to his lawyer.

“I could hear him pleading, ‘Please, officer, what’s all this for?’” Mr. Hall said in an interview with Erica L. Green of The New York Times.

Mr. Hall recounted Mr. Floyd’s last moments.

“He was just crying out at that time for anyone to help, because he was dying,” Mr. Hall said. “I’m going to always remember seeing the fear in Floyd’s face, because he’s such a king. That’s what sticks with me: seeing a grown man cry, before seeing a grown man die.”

Protests coalesce into a unified push for reforms

June 6: Demonstrations that began as spontaneous eruptions of outrage after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police two weeks ago coalesced this weekend into a nationwide movement calling for police reforms and racial justice.

Tens of thousands gathered in big cities like New York and Seattle and small towns like Vidor, Texas, and Marion, Ohio — in swelling crowds that have been multiethnic, spanning generations and overwhelmingly peaceful. The movement has also spread around the world, with protests this weekend in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. [NYT article]

Floyd Funeral

June 9: the Guardian reportedthat George Floyd’s life was celebrated at his funeral with eulogies that honored him as a father, brother, athlete and mentor whose death sparked a global reckoning over police brutality and racial prejudice.

Crowds descended on a church in Houston, Texas, after Floyd’s body was returned to his childhood hometown to be laid to rest in a cemetery in suburban Pearland next to his mother, whom he called out for as he lay dying with a police officer’s knee on his neck in May.

Police Kill George Floyd

NASCAR Bans Confederate Battle Flag

June 10: NPR reported that NASCAR banned the Confederate battle flag at all of its events and properties. In a  tweet, the stock car racing organization said the presence of the flag “runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and industry.”

One of its popular drivers (and the only full-time African American racing in its top circuit), Bubba Wallace had repeatedly called for the flag’s ouster.

July 8: the NY Times reported that transcriptsof  the incident’s Minneapolis police body camera footage were filed in state court as part of an effort by Thomas Lane, one of the officers on the scene, to have charges that he aided and abetted Mr. Floyd’s murder thrown out by a judge.

The transcripts revealed that Mr. Floyd uttered “I can’t breathe” not a handful of times, as previous videotapes showed, but more than 20 times in all. He cried out not just for his dead mother but for his children too. Before his final breaths, Mr. Floyd gasped: “They’ll kill me. They’ll kill me.”

Transcripts also show that as Mr. Floyd shouted for his life, an officer yelled back at him to “stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.”

Police Kill George Floyd

$ Settlement

March 12, 2021: the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million to settle a civil lawsuit from George Floyd’s family over the Black man’s death in police custody, as jury selection continued in former officer Derek Chauvin’s murder trial.

Council members met privately to discuss the settlement, then returned to public session for a unanimous vote in support of the massive payout. It easily surpassed the $20 million the city approved two years ago to the family of a white woman killed by a police officer.

Floyd family attorney Ben Crump called it the largest pretrial settlement ever for a civil rights claim, and thanked city leaders for “showing you care about George Floyd.”

“It’s going to be a long journey to justice. This is just one step on the journey to justice,” Crump said. “This makes a statement that George Floyd deserved better than what we witnessed on May 25, 2020, that George Floyd’s life mattered, and that by extension, Black lives matter.” [AP article]

Jury

March 24, 2021:  the final juror was chosen, wrapping up a process that took more than two weeks.

Attorneys and the judge worked through more than 100 people, dismissing most because they acknowledged strong views about an encounter that was captured on bystander video. [AP article]

Trial Underway

April 1:  On the fourth day of the trial, Sgt. David Pleoger,  who supervised Derek Chauvin testified  Chauvin and other police officers should have stopped holding George Floyd down once he became unresponsive.

“When Mr. Floyd was no longer offering up any resistance to the officers, they could have ended their restraint,” said Pleoger, who is now retired. In response to a question from a prosecutor, he agreed that police officers should not restrain someone who is handcuffed and no longer resisting.

Pleoger said that he had spoken with Mr. Chauvin moments after Mr. Floyd was taken away in an ambulance, and that Mr. Chauvin had not mentioned the pressure to Mr. Floyd’s neck in that conversation. [NYT article]

Veteran Police Testimony

April 2:  the NY Times reported that Lt. Richard Zimmerman had seen hundreds of crime scenes, interviewed scores of witnesses and made his share of arrests over more than 35 years working cases in Minneapolis, but when Lt. Richard Zimmerman watched a video of one of his colleagues kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, he saw what he described as a “totally unnecessary” violation of department policy.

“Pulling him down to the ground face down and putting your knee on a neck for that amount of time, it’s just uncalled-for,” testified Zimmerman, who was the longest-serving officer on the Minneapolis police force.

April 5: Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo, who called George Floyd’s death “murder” soon after it happened. testified that Officer Derek Chauvin had clearly violated department policy when he pinned Floyd’s neck beneath his knee for more than 9 minutes.

Continuing to kneel on Floyd’s neck once he was handcuffed behind his back and lying on his stomach was “in no way, shape or form” part of department policy or training, “and it is certainly not part of our ethics or our values,” Arradondo said on day six of Chauvin’s murder trial. [AP article]

Defense Strategy

April 13: Derek Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, presented a video of the May 2019 arrest and questioned the paramedic who treated Mr. Floyd that day. He asked a woman who was with him the day he died about how Mr. Floyd fell asleep in the car and was difficult to rouse. He reviewed the signs of excited delirium, a condition often attributed to using stimulants.

Other planks of the defense emerged as well, including suggestions that the bystanders who tried to intervene were threatening and that Mr. Chauvin’s behavior was reasonable in the circumstances. [NYT article]

Chauvin Speaks/Defense Rests

April 15: for the first time in nearly three weeks of testimony, the former officer Derek Chauvin spoke in the courtroom. Nearing the end of the defense’s case, Mr. Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric J. Nelson, asked Mr. Chauvin whether he would like to testify in his own defense.

Mr. Nelson said he and Mr. Chauvin have had repeated conversations on the matter, including a “lengthy meeting” the night before. Mr. Chauvin, who removed his mask to answer Mr. Nelson’s questions, chose to waive his right to testify. [NYT article]

Later that same day, the prosecution and defense lawyers rested their cases. Closing arguments began the following Monday, April 19. [NYT article]

Guilty x3

April 20:  the jury found Derek Chauvin  guilty of murder on all three counts.

The verdict, which could send Chauvin to prison for decades, was a rare rebuke of police violence, following case after case of officers going without charges or convictions after killing Black men, women and children. [NYT article]

Chauvin Sentenced

June 25, 2021: Judge Peter A. Cahill sentenced Derek Chauvin to 22 and a half years. In delivering Chauvin’s sentence Cahill referred to the “particular cruelty” of the crime.

Judge Cahill issued a 22-page memorandum about his decision, writing, “Part of the mission of the Minneapolis Police Department is to give citizens ‘voice and respect.’” But Mr. Chauvin, the judge wrote, had instead “treated Mr. Floyd without respect and denied him the dignity owed to all human beings and which he certainly would have extended to a friend or neighbor.” [NYT article]

Federal Trial

Chose not to intervene

January 24, 2022: Samantha Trepel, special litigation counsel from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division said in opening statements today that the three former Minneapolis Police officers who helped Derek Chauvin restrain George Floyd in May 2020 committed federal crimes when they ignored Floyd’s repeated pleas of “I can’t breathe.”

“Each made a conscious choice over and over again,” said Trepel. “They chose not to intervene and stop Chauvin as he killed a man. They chose not to protect George Floyd, the man they handcuffed.” [CNN article]
Guilty
February 24, 2022, a  jury found J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao  guilty of violating George Floyd’s civil rights.

All were convicted of depriving Floyd of his civil rights while acting under government authority when they failed to give him medical aid. Kueng and Thao, additionally, were convicted of not intervening to stop their fellow officer Derek Chauvin from using excessive force. They had pleaded not guilty. [NBC News article]

Sentenced

July 7, 2022:  Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 21 years in federal prison. He was sentenced for using excessive force under color of law against both George Floyd, the man who died in the encounter, and a 14-year-old boy, also Black, who was injured in an unrelated, though similar, incident.

With time already served deducted, Chauvin’s sentence amounted to 20 years and five months, near the lower end of the range of 20 to 25 years prescribed by the sentencing guidelines. His federal and state sentences were to be served concurrently.

In imposing the sentence, Judge Paul Magnuson of U.S. District Court in St. Paul said . ““I really don’t know why you did what you did, but to put your knee on another person’s neck until they expired is simply wrong, and for that conduct you must be substantially punished. You absolutely destroyed the lives of three other young officers” who were also involved, the judge added. [NYT article]

Attempted Murder

November 24, 2023: inmate John Turscak stabbed Chauvin 22 times. Chauvin will survive.

December 1, 2023: authorities charged John Turscak with attempted murder. He told investigators he had targeted Chauvin because of his notoriety for killing George Floyd. [AP story]

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