"I felt like I was made for that moment": Keith Ellison on prosecuting the George Floyd murder

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is no stranger to the spotlight. He was the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, back in 2006. After 12 years in the House, including two years as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, he became the first Muslim American elected to statewide office when he was elected to his current office in 2018. He won re-election last fall in a landmark election for Minnesota Democrats. But handling the prosecution of Derek Chauvin and the other Minneapolis police officers who murdered George Floyd, Ellison says, was in many ways the culmination of his life and career and unlike anything he had encountered before. While a state attorney general wouldn't ordinarily prosecute local crimes, Ellison was appointed as a special prosecutor in the Floyd case by Gov. Tim Walz.

I recently spoke with Ellison — with whom I've been friendly for years — about his new book, "Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence" for an installment of "Salon Talks." He admitted that with the entire world watching the Floyd case, he did feel an extra sense of responsibility for prosecuting the officers who had killed him. "It sounds weird even for me to say it, but the truth is my whole life I've been prepared for this moment," Ellison explained. "I didn't know it, but I mean, I was in the state legislature, I was in Congress, I came to this. I've been working on police stuff all my life, ever since I was 25 years old."

To Ellison, the conviction of Chauvin and the other officers represents an important step toward breaking the cycle of police violence. "We need to win these cases," Ellison explained, so that police officers understand they will be held accountable for their actions in criminal court if and when that is necessary. "Juries are ready to say, 'This violates the law,'" he added, while stressing that it's not enough. "We need Congress to act," he said, by passing the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. (Which is not likely to occur as long as Republicans hold the House.)

I also asked Ellison to reflect to the fact that nearly two and a half years since Donald Trump's attempted coup and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, our former president has faced no criminal charges related to those events. "We have to enforce the idea that no one's above the law and no one's beneath the law," Ellison said. And when it comes to "MAGA types," he added, we need to face the fact that they are "just done with representative democracy."

Watch my interview with Keith Ellison here or read a transcript of our conversation below to hear his take on the direction of justice in America, what it took to convict Chauvin and whether he has plans to run for higher office.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The foreword of your book is written by Philonise Floyd, George Floyd's brother. Why was that important to you? The book is obviously about George Floyd's murder and how the criminal justice system responded afterward, but it begins with Philonise.

Philonise really went from being a very ordinary guy — extraordinary to the people who loved him and knew him, but ordinary in the eyes of the world. He's driving a truck, he's just a dude making a living, and then he's thrust into the middle of this international conflict with his brother's murder and he's required to be a spokesperson. He's required to stand up and articulate, on behalf of his family and so many millions, what this moment means. I thought that Philonise was the best person and I'm really grateful to him. As he was writing the foreword, [the killing of] Tyre Nichols happened. He's the perfect person to pull back the curtain and start the show when it comes to this book.

Your office ended up being in charge of the prosecution of Derek Chauvin.

Right. All of them.

At the beginning, your office wasn't involved in that. How did the attorney general of Minnesota become the one charged with prosecuting Chauvin and the other officers? 

Well, quite honestly, I think it's impossible to know what caused the eruption that Thursday night. It would have been about May 30, 2020, when the Third Precinct [of Minneapolis] goes up in flames. Earlier that day, the U.S. attorney and the county attorney had a press conference, and it was one of those moments where the press was ravenously hungry for any news, so then in those moments, anything you say becomes news.

The prosecutor in the county said, "Look, we're still getting information, some good, some bad, and there's some evidence coming in inconsistent with a charge." He said a lot of things, but that is what got picked up. That sparked the family, a bunch of legislators and even some celebrities to start calling the governor saying, "Give Ellison the case." That Saturday, he calls me and says, "Let's do it together." Absolutely. He's a friend and I thought he could use the help.

I had people telling me, "Don't get involved in that. If you win, the cops are going to hate you. If you lose, the people are going to hate you, so just stay out of it. Let him deal with it on his own." But I'm not cut out like that.

By that Sunday, the governor is like, "Will you be on this case?" I'm like, "Sure, of course I'm going to step up and help my community." People gave us the time we needed to pull the case together. We actually did re-evaluate the complaint and the counts that the officers were charged with, and then we moved on from there.

In retrospect, and maybe even at the time, did you feel a sense of responsibility? The world was watching, the country was watching, we're in the middle of COVID, there's people in the streets. Did you feel any more sense of responsibility in this case than in the typical case you handle in the AG's office?

I think the answer is yes, and I'll tell you why. It sounds weird even for me to say it. The truth is, my whole life I've been prepared for this moment. I didn't know it, but I mean, I was in the state legislature, I was in Congress, I came to this. I've been working on police stuff for all my life, ever since I was 25 years old. I had been doing criminal defense, so I understood this case from the other side. I have been working on policing issues. 

One of the things I talk about early in the book is that two blocks north of where this tragic incident happened with George Floyd, me and my law partners brought a civil case against an officer who shot a 15-year-old kid in the back. We sued him and we got a zero verdict against us. Our client got zeroed out and we spent a lot of money to try to bring the case forward. So that told me right then, right there: Wow. What was that loss for?

Well, I don't know what it was for. Maybe it wasn't for anything. But what it meant to me here is how hard these cases are to win. [That kid] was shot in the back. Now, he did have a water pistol. It was red and it looked like that, and yet he still got zeroed out.

So this [the Floyd case] was a grave matter. There was something about the location, the time and everything about this matter that told me that if I don't do anything and everything I can to try to bring a just resolution, I'm failing on life's purpose, maybe. That sounds kind of dramatic, but you asked me if I felt a sense of responsibility and if I'm going to be very honest, I'll say that I felt I was made for that moment.

In the bigger picture of criminal justice and policing, you mention the case Graham v. Connor in your book, which speaks to the issue of why police don't get charged, why police officers are so rarely held liable? Tell us a little bit about that so people can understand.

Graham v. Connor takes place in North Carolina. There's this guy, a very regular guy who happens to be a type-one diabetic. He has a diabetic episode and he's in the car with his friend and he says, "Pull over, pull over now. I've got to get, like, orange juice or something because I can feel myself going into an episode." So his friend pulls over, he goes in, he grabs an orange juice. He sees a long line. For some reason he doesn't budge the line, he just puts the orange juice back and runs out to the car to see if he can find somewhere quicker. 

Well, this officer sees him go in and come out quickly and then follows the car. He pulls them over, and this guy is going into sort of an episode and is acting somewhat erratically. But there's no evidence at all of a crime being committed. Nobody's complaining. Nothing is wrong. The officer verbally abuses him. He loses consciousness. They throw him into the car, and they injure him in doing so. Then they find out that he's done literally nothing wrong except for suffering the consequences of being a type-one diabetic. Then they drive him to his house and throw him out of the car like he's a bag of trash. Then he sues, and And he gets a judge who is a segregationist, a judge who worked for [former North Carolina senator] Jesse Helms. This judge was known to want to maintain a segregated Jim Crow society. So he loses the case, and in fact, the judge directs a verdict for the state.

Now, it's interesting, Dean, because we don't have Graham v. Connor as the law at this point. We have a case called Johnson v. Glick, which says that a plaintiff has to prove malicious intent. Now, how in the world do you prove that, unless someone says, "I am maliciously intending to injure you?" That doesn't happen very often, so it was thought that Graham v. Connor would be a step forward. But Graham v. Connor is based on the Fourth Amendment, which says there shall be no unreasonable search and seizure. It doesn't say from the perspective of the officer. It doesn't say without the benefit of hindsight. It doesn't say any of that. But the Supreme Court reads it into there. 

One of the things I put in the book is a colloquy between the state's lawyer and Justice Thurgood Marshall, who is like, "Well, the man's not violent. What are you talking about? What's the problem?" And the lawyers are kind of dumbfounded and stuck. When Graham v. Connor is issued in 1989, it looks like an advance because it's based on objective reasonableness. But it's objective reasonableness from the perspective of the officer, without the benefit at hindsight. So in Graham v. Connor, when his case was tried, because it was remanded to the trial court, the defense was, "Well, the officer didn't know he was having a diabetic fit. He was acting erratically and the officer gets to arrest him for his erratic behavior." I'm just reading that case dumbfounded, thinking, there's no crime reported, no evidence of a crime, no speeding. I mean, literally nothing. You have a right to walk into a store and walk out again.

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Graham v. Connor essentially says that if an officer uses excessive force against you, they will escape any consequence. It's an important case for people to know the underlying facts, because Graham v. Connor is what all 18,000 police departments across America use and are trained on.

Under that standard, police officers believe they can do just about anything, to be honest.

Yeah.

Let's get back to the trial of Derek Chauvin. The entire nation is watching this. I remember it vividly. Is there anything that sticks with you when you think back on that trial?

Many things do. But I'll tell you one moment when I had an unexpected emotional reaction. Imagine, Dean, that from the moment I got this case until the trial, I had reviewed the tape thousands of times. But one thing I didn't get, and that was the moment when George Floyd is under the knee of Derek Chauvin and his eyes go and then they close. Dr. Tobin identified that as the moment when the life went out of George Floyd. You could see it and it was clear. It was one of those things that I'll never forget. 

That proved to me that we were well advised to throw a lot of energy into the medical case. Because a lot of people were thinking, "Well, what do you need the medical? What's the big deal about the medical? He's walking one minute, 10 minutes later, he's dead. Obviously there was an intervening cause." Well, the defense, doing their job, was there to pick every element apart, and we were wise not to just take it as face value.

Another event: Mr. Charles McMillan, 61 years old, lived his life, has seen the tough, bitter part of what America, our country, can deliver to a Black man from the South without any formal education. Here this tough old guy is in tears over what he saw. He didn't know George Floyd, but he was trying desperately to save George Floyd's life. Anybody who's cynical about humanity needs to see what those people did to try to save him. A young white woman, Genevieve Hansen, a firefighter on her day off, just going for a walk, sees this tragic incident. She intervenes, "Check his pulse. Check his pulse." She probably got as close as anyone to getting arrested for intervening, for trying to save George Floyd's life. She didn't know him from a can of paint.

Here we see these human beings who don't know George Floyd, putting themselves in harm's way to try to save his life. They were multicultural. They were intergenerational, both sexes, and they were randomly selected and none of them knew George Floyd. So don't tell me that people don't care. People do care, and they tried to do what they could and yet they weren't able to save his life. But then they came back a year later to try to explain to the jury what happened. That to me, I still find extraordinary. I still find it extraordinary and I could keep going.

You said famously after the verdict that this was not justice.

Right.

This was the beginning of accountability.

That's right.

The idea behind your book is that we can break the cycle of police violence. What needs to be done next to do that, and how does the verdict in the Derek Chauvin case, and in the case of the other officers, contribute to breaking that cycle?

It chips away at breaking the cycle. It doesn't break the cycle. Sometimes something is necessary, but insufficient, to solve a problem. If you're going to make a cake you need flour, but if all you've got is flour, you don't have a cake.

We need to win these cases. One thing we do know is that juries are ready to say, "This violates the law." The federal case, which was sort of a parallel, which happened about a year later, we were doubtful as to whether or not a federal jury, which would be drawn from the southern half of the state of Minnesota, which would include rural areas [would find Chauvin guilty]. Well, they still came back with a guilty verdict, proving the juries are ready.

In another case that occurred in the middle of our trial, the case of [Minneapolis officer] Kim Potter, the jury came back on her when she mistakenly used a Glock when she was reaching for her Taser. Jurors are ready to say, "Here's the law. Here's what you did. We're going to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." But we need Congress to act. The George Floyd Justice and Policing Act is not passed yet. We have got to get this law passed. It is critical, not only in the specifics, but in the meaning of Congress saying we're turning the page on an old, bad practice.

But standing in the way of that, to be honest, is the lack of support in the GOP base for any reform at all.

No doubt.

There was a poll that came out after the verdict in Derek Chauvin's case, where 46% of Republicans thought it was the wrong verdict. In other words nearly half of all Republicans. If they can see the brutal, barbaric murder of George Floyd, and say, no, that cop shouldn't be charged, then they're not open to any kind of criminal justice reform. What do we do there? 

Well, you're right, that is somewhat concerning. But then maybe 54% believe that there should be. My point is, I think there is a national consensus for real change. Interestingly enough, during Jan. 6, you had police officers being brutally harmed, several die as a result, and they're outraged by that. I think there is a universal recognition that we cannot allow arbitrary violence by state actors. The Fourth Amendment says there shall be no unreasonable search and seizure. If it means something, here's what it means: It means that state actors cannot use arbitrary force to take your stuff or hurt you. That government can't act arbitrarily violent towards you. I think that even the most conservative Republican would have to agree that that is a core constitutional principle.

When you introduce things like race, class and party, city versus rural, things get blurry. But I think that if you boil it down to what is actually happening there, it's state violence, and that's why people all over the world could see this as sort of emblematic. That's why people in Edinburgh, Scotland, are like, "That's wrong." I think you and I talked about this before, but there's this iconic picture of one person standing in front of a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square. I don't speak Mandarin, I don't think you speak Mandarin, but you don't need to in order to see that this is state power against the individual.

This picture of George Floyd with the knee on his neck of a the man in a uniform — ignore the colors of the people. They could be both the same color, whatever. No matter what the colors of the individuals are, the colors of the uniforms tell the story. Government brutal authority being exercised against a person who's helpless to stop it. The whole world can see that that's wrong. Hopefully Republicans can too.

You mentioned Jan. 6. To me it's so important to have confidence in our criminal justice system. The conviction of Derek Chauvin and the other police officers, I think, does that for us. Donald Trump has not been charged in the nearly two and a half years since Jan. 6, 2021. You're the attorney general of Minnesota. What's your reaction to this?

My reaction is that we have to enforce the idea that no one's above the law and no one's beneath the law. Now, in the Floyd case, Derek Chauvin operated not because he was dumb and not because he didn't know what the law was or because he wasn't trained, but because he had every reason to believe he was above the law and that George Floyd was beneath the law. Meaning, we could do whatever we want to this guy and I'm never going to be accountable, because in our system people like me get to do whatever they want to people like him. We set out to prove that wasn't true. That we have equal justice for all.

The Jan. 6 situation — I mean, our nation had better reflect on the constitutional principles that undergird our country, because if we don't enforce them, they become words on a page. There can be no one in this country, not one single soul, who feels like, I operate above the law. I walk between the raindrops, I do whatever I want and nobody's ever going to call me to account. This is constitutionally dangerous. It is a big mistake. And let me tell you, people will act on it. How can we as Americans, go over to the Philippines and say, "Oh, you all have to have a better system of justice." They're like, "Really? You talking?" We've got to be credible, and that means from the highest socioeconomic person to the lowest, there's got to be equal justice.

You were in the House. You won your first congressional election in 2006. You were dealing with the Republican Party. At that time it felt extreme, right?

Yeah, it sure did.

Today Republicans are banning reproductive freedom, banning books, banning Black history, gender-affirming care. Threatening, in Florida, to take children from parents who dare do what a doctor says to get gender-affirming care. Where is this GOP going? It seems like there's no limits to their use of the apparatus of state government to impose their religious beliefs or their right-wing beliefs on all of us.

Well, let me just say, I think that the MAGA types, those folks have an agenda that they're just done with representative democracy. I think all the evidence available points in one direction: It is about power. Power now, power for certain people and not power for others. They had a long-term plan to capture the Supreme Court, and that's where it's at. I mean, this "replacement theory" thing, everybody needs to stop and say, what is this doctrine? Because what it really is, it's a minority rule doctrine. It's a doctrine that says we believe that people not like us are growing into the majority. So how do we rule from the minority? How do we do that? We control the courts, we undermine voting and we don't like a world in which all the privileges don't run in our favor. This whole thing about Bud Light, we've got to stop seeing this as ridiculous, which is how I saw it when I first saw it. It's not ridiculous to them. It's a highly symbolic indicator of authority and privilege, which they want to run only in their direction.

When you first got elected to Congress, you were the first Muslim American, and there was some backlash. 

Had a little backlash.

Donald Trump built it to a crescendo with the Muslim ban. A week and a half ago, Donald Trump in New Hampshire said, "If I'm back in, we're going to have a bigger travel ban." He said point blank that we don't want our buildings blown up. I try to tell people in the Muslim community, they're going to come back for us.

You better believe it. So here's the thing, Dean. In the last few months we've had six mosque burnings in Minnesota. Mosque burnings. We had a bombing at a mosque during Trump's reign and he never said a word about it. So all of us said, "If it had been some Muslim doing this, it'd have been front-page news for a month." But a mosque was literally bombed by people who drove all the way from the Chicago area, the White Rabbit militia, to bomb a mosque, and he doesn't give even a little bit of a care.

This is not the first time, but we are dealing with people who are anti-democratic, don't believe in the rule of law and believe in privileges for themselves only. And they actually wink and nod at these violent types. I mean what did the upper crust, white-collar business types say about the Klan? They're lowbrow, but let them do what they do, right? They're lowbrow, but just leave them alone. That is what they're worried about. I think that most people believe that all human beings are endowed with dignity, and deserve a fair economy. But I think those people believe in no set of values. We've got to wake up and understand they are snatching your country right up under your nose.

Will you be the first Muslim governor?

We'll see. Honestly, I'm not looking forward to the next thing. I never have, really. When I left Congress, I had a lot of friends who were like, "What are you doing? Have you lost your mind? You walked away from a safe seat to run for a very unsafe seat?" And look, I have to follow the dictates of my conscience. So we'll see. I don't thirst for higher jobs or whatever. If I see a reason, we'll pursue it. I'm not foreclosing it, but my heart's not set on it either. There's a lot of ways to serve, and that's what it's about for me.