George Floyd Family Lawyer Says They’re Considering Suing Kanye for Wild Claims About Murder

Photo by JEAN-BAPTISTE LACROIX/AFP via Getty Images

Kanye West might soon add a lawsuit to his growing list of recent troubles, after the attorney representing the family of George Floyd said they are considering suing the rapper over his wildly incorrect claims about Floyd’s death.

A preview clip from an upcoming episode of the Drink Champs podcast showed West discussing the Floyd case and claiming that “he said a prayer for eight minutes, they hit him with the fentanyl” and “the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”

Oh, and West also blamed the “Jewish media,” keeping with his troubling recent trend of anti-Semitic comments.

As I wrote in August when Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who just last week was in the headlines over his own controversial interview with West — made a similarly false claim that Floyd died from a fentanyl overdose, these comments ignore the 9 minutes and 29 seconds the entire world saw former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck, including 3 minutes and 51 seconds after he was non-responsive, as shown in videos from bystanders’ cell phones and the police body cameras.

Medical examiners determined Floyd’s death was a homicide, with a low level of oxygen from the compression on his neck causing cardiopulmonary arrest, and analyzing the amount of fentanyl in his bloodstream as too low to be fatal. (The testimony of Dr. Martin Tobin, a longtime pulmonary specialist with extensive expertise in pulmonary and critical care medicine, is a helpful explanation of the facts of this case.) A jury agreed, finding Chauvin guilty of all three counts of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter.

Lee Merritt, a civil rights lawyer and activist who has been representing the Floyd family, responded to West’s comments on Twitter Sunday.

“While one cannot defame the dead,” Merritt wrote, “the family of [George Floyd] is considering suit for Kanye’s false statements about the manner of his death.”

“Claiming Floyd died from fentanyl not the brutality established criminally and civilly undermines & diminishes the Floyd family’s fight,” he concluded.