Minnesota Governor Tim Walz didn’t mince words when asked what the motivation was for the new movement among MAGA Republicans to convince President Donald Trump to pardon Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who killed George Floyd in 2020.

“Racism. It’s racist. OK? That’s what I believe,” Walz said in an interview with Semafor published Wednesday.

The calls to pardon Chauvin started with an online petition earlier this month, according to The Independent. The pardon push picked up steam this week when conservative commentator Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire launched a webseries, “The Case of Derek Chauvin.” Shapiro claims the officer was convicted on “extraordinarily scanty evidence,” saying Floyd did not die from having Chauvin’s knee on his neck for over nine minutes, but rather from drugs in Floyd’s system and heart disease.

READ MORE: Derek Chauvin Sentenced to 22-and-a-Half Years for Murder of George Floyd – Less Than Maximum Possible Sentence

Walz, however, disputes this interpretation of events.

“This was a man who murdered George Floyd on TV,” Walz said, adding that a pardon “would undermine the faith in the system.”

The White House, however, has denied that a Chauvin pardon is in Trump’s plans. Earlier this month, Trump said he hadn’t even heard about a push to pardon Floyd’s killer, and on Wednesday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated that a pardon is “not something he’s considering at this time,” according to The Grio.

However, some commentators, like The Hill’s Juan Williams are skeptical, pointing out that Trump has pardoned two police officers convicted of killing a Black man in the first days of his second term.

In 2020, after the killing, Trump condemned Chauvin.

“We all saw what we saw. It’s hard to conceive anything other than what we did see. It should have never happened,” Trump said.

If Trump were to pardon Chauvin, it would be largely moot. Presidents can only pardon those convicted on federal charges. Chauvin was convicted on both federal and Minnesota state charges. In the event Trump cleared the federal charges, the main thing that would happen is that Chauvin would be moved from the federal prison in Big Spring, Texas to a Minnesota state prison.

Minnesota sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years for murder; on the federal level, he was sentenced to 21 years for violating Floyd’s civil rights. Barring a federal pardon, the two sentences are running concurrently, not consecutively.

Image via Shutterstock

Just like Watergate. Only bigger.

The impeachment will be televised – or at least, this week’s impeachment inquiry hearings will be.

The top broadcast television networks and top cable news networks will all air the House Intelligence Committee hearings live, according to The Hill. That means ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS will all pre-empt their regularly scheduled programming. MSNBC, Fox News, and C-SPAN will also air the hearings live. CBS’s website CBSN is also expected to offer “wall-to-wall” online streaming, and others, including PBS are expected to as well. The House Intel Committee has already scheduled the live hearings videos to its YouTube channel.

Several news outlets are comparing this week’s hearings, which are expected to attract millions upon millions of viewers, to the Watergate hearings in 1973. The Associated Press on Monday called those historic hours – nearly 250 across 51 nights – “a communal experience, and by some estimates, more than 80% of Americans tuned in to at least part of the Watergate telecasts.”

The Watergate hearings ran from May to November 1973, 46 years ago. President Richard Nixon ended up resigning the following year in August.

This week’s hearings kick off on Wednesday, with testimony from Ambassador William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent. Taylor is Chargé D’affaires for Ukraine for the U.S. State Dept. Kent is responsible for the European and Eurasian Bureau at the State Dept.

On Friday, former Ukraine Ambassador Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch will testify before the Committee.