Jack Cashill, Still On The Wrong Side of History

The WorldNetDaily columnist still can't stop defending Derek Chauvin -- or spreading conspiracy theories about those who helped demonstrate the former police officer's guilt in the death of George Floyd.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 4/1/2024

Jack Cashill

Cashill played Chauvin whataboutism with another favored victim in a July 2022 column:

Former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin and D.C. Metro Police Officer Lila Morris each encountered a likely lawbreaker of another race in distress. One attempted to arrest the lawbreaker as peacefully as possible. The other beat the distressed person savagely with a stick.

The one officer became a national pariah and is likely to spend the next 20 or so years in prison. The other officer is unknown to the major media and has not even been reprimanded. Those who insist that America is laboring under a two-tier justice system need no other example to prove their case.

Morris, the D.C. officer, is black. Her victim's name is Roseanne Boyland. She was white. Should race matter in this case? Why not? It certainly did in Chauvin's. Had George Floyd been white, Chauvin would likely still be a Minneapolis cop.

It's telling that Cashill still can't spell Boyland's first name correctly (it's "Rosanne"), suggesting a lack of commitment and overall journalistic laziness. Speaking of which, Cashill lazily peddled his previous defenses of Boyland, this time adding; "As videos by the Epoch Times clearly show, Morris picked up a long stick lying in the tunnel and struck Boyland savagely three times. She attempted to strike her a fourth time, but the stick mercifully flew out of her hand." Cashill doesn't explain why anyone should trust such unconfirmed evidence coming from a biased right-wing outlet like the Epoch Times or why a police officer doesn't have the right to defend herself against a group of violent insurrectionists. Instead, he whined:

Four people died on Capitol grounds Jan. 6. All were protesters. It is possible that all four were killed as a direct result of police action. Ashli Babbitt certainly was. And if Officer Morris did not kill Boyland, there should at least be some repercussion for beating a person already unconscious.

Derek Chauvin did nothing remotely as evil as that. In truth, he did nothing evil at all.

Cashill used an October 2022 column to accuse Minnesota officials of not overturning Chauvin's murder conviction because they fear another riot:

The judges on the Minnesota Court of Appeals will soon be asking themselves the same question the jurors did in the third-degree murder trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

Do I save Derek Chauvin? Or do I save my own ass?

The judges will inevitably have to consider the effects on the community's well-being and on their own personal safety if they choose to overturn Chauvin's conviction.

The jurors could keep their fears to themselves. The judges will have to confront them head on. In his concise and passionate reply brief filed on Oct. 7, Chauvin attorney William F. Mohrman allows the judges little wiggle room. Says he bluntly and convincingly, "Chauvin did not receive due process."

There were many reasons why this was so.

Cashill went on to parrot Mohrman's argument that Chauvin could not have gotten a fair trial in Minneapolis because his trial came after the riots sparked by Chauvin's killing of Floyd: "Not since the federal civil rights trial of the cops acquitted in the Rodney King dust-up has any defendant faced so frightened a jury." As if the video of Chauvin's knee on Floyd's neck for nine-plus minutes. Cashill actually defended the technique: "The maneuver looks bad, but it works, is relatively safely and has been widely used, even in Minneapolis."

Cashill concluded with yet another conspiracy:

Oral arguments, I am told, will be scheduled for January. The normal procedure is for the Court of Appeals to select three of its 19 judges to review the case as a panel.

Morhman suggested three possible remedies: reversal of the conviction, reversal and a remand for a new trial, or a remand for re-sentencing. If justice favors the first option, smart money favors the third.

Smart money also favors an early January outbreak of a new COVID variant at the Minnesota Court of Appeals. "You know I'd love to be on that panel but ..."

Does Cashill think that U.S. officials are working with China to unleash new COVID variants to throw off scheduling of court hearings? It seems so.

New conspiracy theories

Cashill's Oct. 4 column actually began by attacking anti-racism activist Ibram X. Kendi, gloating over the alleged "fall of the House of Kendi – the $40 million Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University" in the wake of an investigation into the center's operations. That attack didn't age well given that the investigation found no issues with how the center's finances were managed, though the center was restructured. Cashill then used the turmoil at Kendi's center to engage in some revisionism:

With Kendi, Black Lives Matter, and other race hustlers forcing open the eyes of their funders, those funders may want to take a hard look at the incident that forced open their pockets. The media should shine the necessary light,

The major media being corrupt beyond redemption, the task falls to the conservative media. Unfortunately, at the time they were nearly as complicit in the railroading of Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers as their mainstream brethren.

He was particularly annoyed with Fox News' Gregg Jarrett, who committed the offense of reporting on Chauvin's guilt; Cashill claimed that Jarrett "seemed to be either blind to the facts or beholden to the suits upstairs," then claimed that Chauvin didn't deliberately kill Floyd:

There was no pressure on Floyd's airways. There was pressure, however, on the one doctor brave enough to testify in Chauvin's defense. Allies of the prosecution sought to ruin his career.

Cashill rehashed his earlier claim that medical examiner Andrew Baker changed an initial finding that Floyd did not suffer asphyxiation to a later finding that he did due to political pressure:

In the frenzied atmosphere of Minneapolis, Baker feared not only for his reputation, but also for his life. He gave the prosecution the wiggle room they needed to hang Chauvin.

Baker was not the only one with reason to be scared. During the trial, the judge had good reason to fear for his life as did the witnesses, the attorneys and the jurors most of all.

Openly apprehensive, the jurors much too quickly found Chauvin guilty on all counts. Watching the verdict come down, I recalled Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' caution from a century ago: "Mob law does not become due process of law by securing the assent of a terrorized jury."

Or, Holmes might have added, the assent of a terrorized media.

In fact, Baker testified during the trial of three other Minneapolis police officers in Floyd's death that he faced no political pressure to add or delete anything in Floyd's autopsy report and that his learning about neck compression-- the method Chauvin used to incapacitate Floyd -- is what caused him to rethink his conclusions. But that doesn't fit Cashill's narrative of exonerating Chauvin, so he ignored it.

Cashill's column is headlined "Time to rethink the martyrdom of George Floyd" -- but he wants you to think that Chauvin, who killed a guy, is somehow the real martyr.

Cashill used a Nov. 1 column to cheer others playing the same game as him on Chauvin:

Giving credit where it's due, popular podcasters Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly recently ignored the media taboo and openly addressed the railroading of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and his three colleagues.

As refreshing as their discussions were, both Carlson and Kelly seemed unaware of a critical bit of exculpatory information that was first revealed more than two years ago.

At that time, no one at their level in the media dared address the obvious injustice unfolding in Minneapolis.

As the world knows, the four officers were imprisoned for their respective roles in the death of chronic felon and drug abuser George Floyd in May of 2020.

Cashill again rehashed his earlier claim that local medical examiner Andrew Baker caved to political pressure to state in an autopsy report that Floyd died of neck compression despite stating that wasn't the case in a preliminary report -- which ignores the fact that Baker testified under oath that he faced no pressure to change anything in Floyd's autopsy report and that the change was due to his learning more about the effects of neck compression -- the method Chauvin used to incapacitate Floyd -- Cashill concluded by huffing: "No justice, no peace."

Cashill also talked about Chauvin on his Nov. 2 podcast, in which he repeated parts of this and complained Chauvin is a victim of "Jacobin justice," huffing that the Floyd case "sent four innocent men to prison" because of "mob fury." Cashill and co-host Loy Edge then manufactured a conspiracy theory that left-wingers want to undermine local police.

Cashill hyped a fellow Chauvin defender in his Nov. 29 column -- after, of course, serving up a little performative outrage over Chauvin getting stabbed in prison:

Not satisfied with sentencing an innocent man to prison for 22 years, the federal government has found new ways to punish former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin.

That includes a near fatal stabbing of Chauvin on Friday, Nov. 24, in a federal prison in Arizona and the inexplicable refusal to alert Chauvin's mother about the incident.

There is no evidence that the feds planned this attack or encouraged it, but their failure to anticipate it at the end of a two-week stretch in which Chauvin was continuously in the news raises eyebrows.

On Nov. 13, Chauvin filed a motion in federal court claiming he never would have pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charges in 2021 if he had been aware of the theories of William Schaetzel, a recently retired Kansas forensic pathologist.

Chauvin is asking Peter Cahill, the judge who presided over his trial, to order a new trial or, at the very least, an evidentiary hearing.

On Nov. 16, producer Liz Collin released a new documentary, "The Fall of Minneapolis," which makes a powerful case for the innocence of Chauvin and his three colleagues.

On Nov. 20, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to entertain a prior appeal on grounds that Chauvin could not get in a fair trial in fear-soaked Minneapolis.

Although the major media blew off Schaetzel's research and Collin's documentary, major figures in the conservative media did not. Megyn Kelly, Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson and Greg Gutfeld among others paid attention. So did the millions of Americans who have seen the movie.

Cashill again repeated his evidence-free claim that Baker was "under pressure" to change Floyd's autopsy report, which he claimed "gave Minnesota's radical black attorney general, Keith Ellison, the excuse he needed to charge Chauvin with murder." Meanwhile, his new pathologist hero Schaetzel -- who didn't examine Floyd's body but merely read autopsy reports -- is claiming that Floyd may have had a paraganglioma, a tumor that allegedly produced a surge of adrenaline that might have killed Floyd. That sounds a lot like the dubious "excited delirium" defense that officers originally cited as an excuse to subdue Floyd.

Cashill weighed in more on Cashill's prison stabbing in his Dec. 6 column -- and, of course, had a conspiracy theory to spread:

Having long ago decided to ignore all inconvenient news, the major media yielded serious coverage of the prison stabbing of Derek Chauvin to the intrepid independent investigator Maryam Henein.

As Henein reports, the man who stabbed Chauvin 22 times on "Black Friday" in an Arizona prison is a 52-year-old con named John Turscak. Don't let the name fool you.

The half-Croatian Turscak is serving a 30-year sentence for crimes committed while leading a Los Angeles faction of the Mexican Mafia in the 1990s.

As even the major media acknowledge, Turscak was an FBI informant. The intel he provided federal investigators led to the indictments of 40 or so of his former colleagues.

Henein, by the way, is a conspiracy theorist who spread many falsehoods about COVID and promoted fraudulent treatments. Cashill offered no reason why anyone should trust Henein given her track record. Instead, he continued to whine that others weren't buying into his own conspiracy theories:

In its scant coverage of the stabbing, the New York Times is quick to remind its readers, "Mr. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who is white, murdered Mr. Floyd, who is Black, during an arrest on a South Minneapolis street corner in May 2020."

Although race had nothing to do with Floyd's death, nor for that matter did Chauvin's restraint of Floyd, the Times puts race front and center in its coverage, capitalizing the "B" in Black and lowercasing the "w" in white.

Not surprisingly, the Times has not seen fit to cover the potentially game-changing new documentary on the Chauvin case, "The Fall of Minneapolis." According to Liz Collin, producer of the film, not even the local Minnesota media will review the film or discuss its findings.

Still, Cashill had a conspiracy theory to keep alive:

With only three years left to go before his release, the question remains as to who or what prompted Turscak to attack Chauvin.

According to the document Turscak signed with the FBI, the agreement between the Bureau and him "shall continue as long as the FBI deems that TURSCAK's services are required."

Given the rush of narrative-eroding information released in the month before the stabbing, one has to wonder whether someone in power thought it a useful time to require "TURSCAK's services."

Of course, Cashill never apologizes when his narratives get eroded -- you know, when his conspiracy theories get debunked, which happens a lot.

For his Jan. 17 column, Cashill called on Chauvin’s mom to perpetuate the victimhood narrative by making unsupported claims about how Chauvin is supposedly being treated in prison after getting stabbed:

On Nov. 24 of this past year, one-time FBI informant John Turscak stabbed former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin 22 times at the FCI Tucson prison where both were housed.

In their continued persecution of Chauvin, now 47, for his role in the death of George Floyd, prison officials have made Chauvin’s life even more miserable than it was prior to the stabbing. “It was like he was the perpetrator,” Chauvin’s mother, Caroline Pawlenty, told me.

While he recovers, Chauvin is locked away in a small windowless medical unit. The only real difference between his cell and a standard one is the steel procedural table in the middle with a rail on its side for easy handcuffing.

The only regular human contact Chauvin has is with the guards who open his door to give him his meals. He is allowed one 10-minute phone call a week.

While in the general population before the stabbing, Chauvin had access to TV, the internet and the library. He had a tablet for games and the like, could rent movies and exercised daily, running 10 or so miles a day.

The last time Caroline saw her son before the stabbing he had a tan. When she visited him earlier this month, she was “horrified” to see him looking so gaunt and pale.

Cashill didn’t explain how this alleged treatment is any different from that received by any other prison inmate, or why Chauvin alone shouldn’t be treated that way. He went on to take a shot at Minnesota’s attorney general:

The last few months have been a nightmare for Chauvin and his parents. Caroline learned about his stabbing only through an Associated Press article.

It horrified her that the prison contacted Minnesota’s racist attorney general, Keith Ellison – his relationship with the Nation of Islam cost him the DNC chair – before anyone contacted her.

“He was duly convicted of his crimes,” said Ellison after the stabbing, “and, like any incarcerated individual, he should be able to serve his sentence without fear of retaliation or violence.”

In truth, Chauvin was anything but duly convicted. The medical examiner, Dr. Andrew Baker, was coerced into adding “neck compression” to Floyd’s pathology report to cover up the real cause of Floyd’s death.

Cashill did not explain how, exactly, anything Ellison said about Chauvin was “racist.” His claim about Baker again ignored how Baker testified that he faced no political pressure to add or delete anything in Floyd’s autopsy report and that his learning about neck compression — the method Chauvin used to incapacitate Floyd — is what caused him to rethink his conclusions.

Cashill concluded by whining (and injecting a unsupported conspiracy about the election):

Chauvin was offered up as sacrificial lamb in the summer of 2020. The riots that ensued scared corporate America into accepting a rigged election.

The Democrats promise much more of the same this summer. So police are advised not to do what Chauvin did on that fateful day in May 2020 – volunteer to work on a day he wasn’t scheduled.

In woke America, no good deed goes unpunished.

Cashill apparently believes that killing a black man is a “good deed.”

Another police death

Chauvin wasn't the only white police officer Cashill defended after killing a black man. He wrote in his Oct. 18 column about an incident in his hometown of Kansas City:

As the media made the public aware – the Kansas City Star relentlessly so – veteran Kansas City police officer Eric DeValkenaere did not shoot and kill an ordinary citizen. He shot a "black man."

It did not matter that DeValkenaere had no known history of racism in his 20-plus year career, or that he was, in the words of one veteran colleague with whom I spoke, "courteous, professional, a hard worker who showed everyone respect and operated by the book."

The "white KC cop" shot a "black man," and for the media, that negated all other variables. Unfortunately, that dynamic seems to have affected the courts as well.

Cashill then recounted alleged offenses by the victim, Cameron Lamb, including a claim of reckless driving earlier in the day. We pick up Cashill's biased version of events as DeValkenaere and his partner, Troy Schwalm, went to Lamb's house in an unmarked vehicle:

After putting on his vest, DeValkenaere followed Schwalm to the address provided by Valentine. He wanted to assure that Schwalm "was not there by himself." Both parked in front.

Schwalm took the lead, walking up the driveway with gun in "low ready" position. DeValkenaere did the same on the far side of the house. Both "believed [the incident] was something more serious than a traffic violation."

Valentine meanwhile reported that the truck was backing into a garage below the house, presumably to duck the helicopter. At the beginning of the incident, Lamb's truck was parked on the street.

Standing at the top of the ramp leading into the garage, Schwalm ordered Lamb to put the truck in park, telling him that it wasn't going to fit in the garage in any case.

Coming around from the far side of the house, DeValkenaere was positioned on the retaining wall above the truck. He had a much clearer view of Lamb than did Schwalm.

Ignoring commands to stop, Lamb continued to back up. DeValkenaere claims he saw Lamb holding a pistol between his legs with his left hand. "He's got a gun, he's got a gun," he shouted.

Not sensing an immediate threat, DeValkenaere refrained from shooting until he saw Lamb bring the gun "up and around the left-hand side of the steering wheel."

"I can't let this happen," DeValkenaere thought, meaning that he couldn't let Lamb shoot Schwalm who was in the more vulnerable position. Fearing the worst, DeValkenaere shot and killed Lamb.

DeValkenaere never entered the garage or touched Lamb. He yielded the shooting scene to the arriving officers. Tactical officer Eurik Hunt testified that he saw the gun "just below ... the driver's door of the vehicle just below where an arm was hanging out from the door."

You will not be surprised to learn that Cashill is omitting certain information in order to forward his narrative. In upholding DeValkenaere's involuntary manslaughter conviction, an appeals court found:

• DeValkenaere and Schwalm did not have permission or a warrant to enter Lamb's property.
• Lamb did not have a gun in his hand at the time DeValkenaere killed him (it was apparently a phone), and Schwalm never saw a gun. Thus, Lamb was not a threat to them.
• DeValkenaere lied to authorities about a "lady in pink" telling him that Lamb had guns.

Like a good conspiracy theorist, Cashill ignores inconvenient facts. Instead, he played the race card against the judge that presided over the trial that originally convicted DeValkenaere:

In his ruling, Youngs compared DeValkenaere to Chauvin – favorably. But that he made the comparison at all suggested that a white officer killing a black perp deserved its own special criminal classification.

As Youngs saw things, "One issue of law ... countermanded every other factual issue in the case," namely "whether or not Sergeant Schwalm and Detective DeValkenaere were lawfully present on the premises when they engaged Cameron Lamb."

Unless the state of Missouri intervenes, DeValkenaere will have six years to study up on the various interpretations of the Fourth Amendment under the heading, "white cop/black perp."

Again, DeValkenaere and Schwalm were not lawfully present on Lamb's property. But Cashill has a race-baiting narrative to peddle, and facts just get in the way.

Cashill continued to defend Devalkenaere and Chauvin in his Oct. 25 column:

"Murder and involuntary manslaughter arising from criminal negligence are two different things," said Missouri Circuit Court Judge J. Dale Youngs in handing Kansas City police officer Eric Devalkenaere a six-year prison sentence.

"They are different legal concepts. They are different things. Eric Devalkenaere is not Derek Chauvin who murdered George Floyd."

As it turns out Derek Chauvin is not the Derek Chauvin who murdered George Floyd for the simple reason that George Floyd wasn't murdered.

Cashill went on to claim that "So dubious was the evidence against Devalkenaere that Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote a convincing appeal to have the verdict overturned. Even more convincing is the appeal made by Devalkenaere's father, Albert, a retired KCPD master detective." Cashill didn't explain what, exactly, was so "convincing" about either statement, given the inherent bias in their appeals: Bailey is a highly partisan right-wing AG, while Albert Devalkenaere is the perp's dad and cannot possibly be objective; indeed, he repeated the false claim that Lamb "dr[e]w a gun as the police were approaching him" and echoed Cashill's race-baiting narrative that prosecutors "wanted to gain notoriety for prosecuting a white police officer in the death of black man."