Judge in George Floyd Case Suggests a Guilty Plea Could Be Overturned Because Maxine Waters Spoke Out Against Violence Against Black People

On Monday, after weeks of arguing that Derek Chauvin acted reasonably when he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds last May, the defense attorney for the former Minneapolis police officer delivered his closing statements—and they were somehow even more outrageous than his previous commentary to date. Among other things, Eric Nelson told the jury:

• That Chauvin acted appropriately because it was reasonable to assume Floyd was only pretending to be dying, saying: “It is not uncommon for suspects to feign, or pretend to have a medical emergency to avoid being arrested. Unfortunately, that is the reality. Nobody likes to get arrested and reasonable police officers know that. How many times does someone [say], ‘oh my heart hurts‘ or ‘I’m having a medical emergency,‘ insert whatever emergency, simply because they don’t want to go to jail? A reasonable police officer will take his training into experience.”

• That, actually, Chauvin would have been justified in using “higher levels of force” against Floyd, “including punches, kicks, elbows.“

• And that it was reasonable for Chauvin to use his body weight to hold Floyd facedown on the ground, i.e. the prone position, because people lay in the prone position all the time, including while getting a massage.

Perhaps anticipating a guilty verdict for his client, Nelson also argued on Monday that the jury was tainted by comments Representative Maxine Waters made over the weekend at a demonstration in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, following the police shooting of Daunte Wright. (The Democratic lawmaker told a crowd: “I’m going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice. We’ve got to get justice in this country and we cannot allow these killings to continue.… We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.” Of Chauvin, Waters said: “I hope we’re going to get a verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty. And if we don’t, we cannot go away.” In response, Judge Peter Cahill suggested that Waters’s comments could be used by the defense to overturn a guilty verdict on appeal, though stopped short of granting a motion for a mistrial.)

On the prosecution‘s side, attorneys Steve Schleicher and Jerry Blackwell told the jury not to listen to the absurd arguments from the defense like the ones about Floyd having coincidentally died from an unrelated heart disease, or from carbon monoxide from the tailpipe of the car Chauvin put Floyd‘s face in front of, or from drugs that weren‘t in Floyd‘s system. Referring to the Chauvin team‘s claim that Floyd had an enlarged heart, Blackwell told the jury in closing, “You were told, for example, that Mr. Floyd died because his heart was too big. You heard that testimony. And now having seen all the evidence, having heard all the evidence, you know the truth. And the truth of the matter is that the reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr. Chauvin’s heart was too small.”

Don Jr.’s girlfriend is trying to get a Republican accused of sexual assault elected to the Senate

That sounds about right:

Kimberly Guilfoyle, who served as a Trump campaign adviser and who is dating his eldest son, will return to the campaign trail, this time as the national chair of former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens’ Senate campaign…Greitens resigned as Missouri’s governor in 2018, following accusations of blackmail and an alleged assault. TPM reported that the former governor slapped the woman he had been accused of blackmailing, with whom he also had an extramarital affair. After the woman testified before the state legislative investigative committee detailing the sexual assault, Greitens resigned as governor in June 2018. Greitens reached a deal with the St. Louis prosecutor’s office, saying that he would step down if the office dropped unrelated campaign finance charges against him.

Greitens allegedly tried to blackmail the woman he had an affair with with nude photos he took of her and threatened to release if she revealed their relationship. Greitens admitted the affair but denied the attempted blackmail. He called a bipartisan report released by the Missouri House, in which the woman said he called her derogatory names, grabbed her crotch without consent, and slapped her in the face a “political witch hunt” full of “lies and falsehoods,” without specifying which claims were false.

Last month, Don Jr. and Kimberly—AKA Donberly to us—followed the other Trump family members heading south by buying a 9.7 million mansion in Jupiter, Florida. For his part, the ex-president‘s namesake has been busy succeeding his father as the biggest a-hole on Twitter.

Amy Coney Barrett paid $2 million to write the next season of The Handmaid‘s Tale

Just kidding, it’s to write a book about how she’s a super unbiased judge and would never inflict her personal biases on her rulings, WINK WINK. Per Politico:

Barrett, Trump’s last pick for the Supreme Court, has…sold a book — garnering a $2 million advance for a tome about how judges are not supposed to bring their personal feelings into how they rule, according to three publishing industry sources. The figure was “an eye-raising amount” for a Supreme Court justice and likely the most since book deals won by Clarence Thomas and Sandra Day O’Connor, one of the people added.

During her confirmation process, Barrett refused to say if the Constitution allows for abortion to be a crime punishable by death, an extremely chilling non-response given that she very much appears to have “personal feelings“ about abortion which very much have made their way into how she rules. In one court opinion, she wrote that the procedure is “always immoral”; she dissented in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., arguing to uphold an Indiana law requiring doctors to notify the parents of a minor seeking an abortion; and she dissented in the case of Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., arguing in favor of a law requiring that fetal remains be buried or cremated. (Separately, she once signed a letter calling for the end of the “barbaric” Roe v. Wade.)

Bill Barr is also writing a book

It‘s not clear if the title will be Bill Barr: My Life As Trump’s Bootlicking Hack, but it should be!

William Barr, Trump’s former attorney general who resigned two days before Christmas after disagreeing publicly with Trump’s voter fraud conspiracy theories, recently sold a book about his time at the Justice Department, according to three people familiar with the deal.

Obviously, Barr will have many topics to touch on, from the Mueller investigation to the 2020 election, but we do hope he devotes at least a couple of chapters to the challenge he faced corrupting the Department of Justice on Trump’s behalf thanks to Trump’s flapping yap.

Elsewhere!

Covid Once Spared the Young. Now More Are Going to the Hospital (Bloomberg)

Biden urges vaccinations for all adults — ‘Everybody is eligible as of today’ (Washington Post)

Amy Klobuchar takes aim at 12 vaccine misinformation influencers (ReCode)

Amazon used illegal intimidation tactics in Alabama vote, union claims (NYP)

NYC’s Developers Plow Ahead With Ambitious Plans to Reshape City (Bloomberg)

Tesla With ‘No One’ Driving Crashes in Texas, Killing Two (Bloomberg)

Stock Shorts Collapse as No Hedge Fund Wants ‘Head Ripped Off’ (Bloomberg)

‘Godzilla’ shark discovered in New Mexico gets formal name (AP)

Girl, 5, wins staring contest with bobcat in Colorado yard (UPI)

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— Serena Williams, Michael B. Jordan, Gal Gadot, and more are coming to your favorite screen April 13–15. Get your tickets to Vanity Fair’s Cocktail Hour, Live! here.