Five years ago this month, after calling for an EMT, Minneapolis Police Officer Tuo Thao held off a mob of angry protestors while his partner, Derek Chauvin, and two rookie colleagues, Thomas Lane and Alex Keung, struggled to subdue a massive, juiced-up felon, the soon-to-be-famous George Floyd.
Thao, a first-generation Cambodian-American and 9-year MPD veteran, is now serving out the final 6 months of a 57-month sentence for aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. One could understand if he were bitter at lead officer Chauvin for getting him into this jam, but Thao, a father of three, has a clearer perspective on his fate than every Democrat official in America and most Republicans. (RELATED: Newly Released Documents Suggest Coercion in the George Floyd Case)
As Thao told the intrepid Liz Collin of Alpha News on a monitored prison phone line, “I’ll put it this way, if it were my knees on the back of Floyd’s neck or black officer Keung’s knees, or Black Chief’s Arradondo’s knees, but for Derek being born white, we’d all still be patrolling the city of Minneapolis.” (RELATED: George Floyd Revisited: Derek Chauvin Was Wrongfully Convicted)
Said Thao, “They lied the entire time, probably to cover themselves.”
Thao had particular contempt for apparent DEI hires, then-MPD Chief Medaria Arradondo and white Assistant Chief Katie Blackwell. Arradondo sued his way to the top and has since retired. Blackwell remains assistant chief of operations. Both testified at Chauvin’s 2021 trial that the Minneapolis Police did not train officers in the Maximum Restraint Technique (MRT) that Chauvin employed on Floyd.
Blackwell made the mistake of suing Collin for defamation. In her book, They’re Lying: The Media, The Left, And The Death of George Floyd, and in her documentary, The Fall of Minneapolis, Collin claimed Blackwell lied on the witness stand by stating that Chauvin’s application of force was not departmental policy. Blackwell had testified in her role as past commander of the training division. (RELATED: How George Floyd Actually Died)
Blackwell argued that the film and book edited her testimony with malice to make her appear as a liar. She sought more than $50,000 in damages from Alpha News, Collin, publishing company Paper Birch Press, and film director J.C. Chaix. (RELATED: The Regime Attacks Chauvin Defenders)
The defense held all the cards. Their court filings, as reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune, “included sworn declarations from 33 former MPD officers who served with Blackwell and an officer still on staff. Those officers alleged that the restraint used by Chauvin on Floyd was part of department training.” Fourteen of those went so far as to allege “Blackwell committed perjury when she testified at Chauvin’s criminal trial.”
In his 58-page order, Hennepin County Judge Edward Wahl said that Collin and her co-defendants “hit every legal standard necessary to avoid the lawsuit going to trial — including that their questioning of whether Blackwell lied on the witness stand met the legal standard of ‘substantial truth.’”
Wrote Wahl of Blackwell’s testimony, “Her answer reasonably invites viewers, jurors, and now the public to conclude that the depicted technique was never trained by MPD.” He added, “That impression is undermined by evidence in the record showing that MPD training materials from 2018-2019 — the period of Blackwell’s tenure — included images of officers applying knees to the neck or upper back.”
Last month, Wahl dismissed her lawsuit and ordered her to pay the defendants $75,000 in attorney fees. This past week, Blackwell accepted the dismissal of her defamation lawsuit and agreed to pay the stipulated fee.
As it happens, this lawsuit was the first defamation case to be filed since Gov. Tim Walz signed the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA) in 2024. That law is meant “to limit frivolous lawsuits that seek to undermine the public discourse.” Thanks to the law, the Minnesota public now know that Chauvin and his colleagues were railroaded, that Arradondo and Blackwell certainly appear to have lied under oath.
Mayor Jacob Frey had established this lie publicly within two days of Floyd’s death. In the video of her interview with Thao, Collin shows Frey declaring, “That particular technique that was used was not authorized by the MPD. It is not something that officers are trained in on. And should not be used period.” Collins overlays Frey’s harangue with training slides from the MPD showing the exact technique Chauvin used.
The Minnesota Star Tribune is Minnesota’s largest newspaper. To their credit editors have shared all this information with the public. Walz, Frey, and Attorney General Keith Ellison can no longer claim ignorance.
As I have documented on these pages in the past, the medical evidence used against Chauvin was thoroughly corrupted. Key witnesses Arradondo and Blackwell lied on the stand about the legality of Chauvin’s restraint. Frey and other officials poisoned the jury pool with declarations of the officers’ guilt. And the jurors, unsequestered and rightfully terrified, were not allowed to see the training slides that would have undone the lies at the heart of the case. (RELATED: State Insists Chauvin Jury Was ‘Impartial,’ Mocks His Appeal)
“This is what injustice looks like,” said Thao. “There needs to be accountability and a return of righteousness.” That return has to begin with Gov. Walz. If he were the real man he claims to be, Walz would atone for his own role in this racial witch hunt and pardon all four of these sacrificial lambs.
Jack Cashill regularly publishes under his own name at Substack.
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