Tim Walz Hand-Picked His Attorney General to Prosecute Chauvin and Now That Decision Is Blowing Up in His Face

August 23, 2026 Cat2, Freedom
AndriiKoval via shutterstock

Tim Walz was already under federal criminal investigation for a $9 billion fraud scandal when this dropped.

Now a bombshell court filing is accusing him of rigging the Derek Chauvin prosecution from day one.

Chauvin's attorney just told a Minnesota court the murder conviction should never have happened – and it starts with what Walz did before the trial even began.

Walz Bypassed the Law to Get the Conviction the Mob Demanded

Here is what actually happened in 2020, according to the new filing.

Hennepin County had its own prosecutors handling the Chauvin case.

One of them – Amy Sweasy – withdrew and openly disagreed with piling on additional charges.

So Walz went around her.

He handed the entire prosecution to Attorney General Keith Ellison, a socialist Democrat who had no lawful authority to take it.

Ellison then did exactly what the rioting crowds demanded: he added a second-degree murder charge that the original county prosecutors had refused to bring.

The filing states it plainly – "Because Hennepin County's unlawful charges against Mr. Chauvin were not severe enough for the mob, Walz referred the case to Keith Ellison, who signed and e-filed a second unfounded complaint against Derek Chauvin that included the murder charge."

Attorney Greg Joseph, representing Chauvin, calls this an "unlawful assignment of authority."

He is not wrong.

Walz had no legal basis to transfer a county prosecution to the state attorney general without following proper statutory procedures.

Ellison had no authority he did not receive through that unlawful transfer.

Every charge that followed – including the murder conviction – rested on a foundation that was rotten from the start.

No Grand Jury. No Indictment. No Jurisdiction.

The second argument in the filing is the one with the most legal firepower.

In Minnesota, as in most states, serious felony charges are supposed to go before a grand jury.

That citizen panel exists for one reason: to make sure prosecutors cannot railroad defendants with charges that lack probable cause.

Walz and Ellison skipped it entirely.

Judge Peter Cahill, who presided over the Chauvin trial, never put the case before a grand jury at any point from the moment he was assigned it through the day of the verdict.

Joseph's filing argues this was not a technicality.

It was a structural error – the kind of fundamental defect in legal proceedings that courts treat as automatically fatal to a conviction.

Structural errors do not require a defendant to prove the outcome would have been different.

They void the proceeding because the framework for a fair trial never existed.

Joseph put it directly: "It is impossible to assess the trial errors in State v. Chauvin because the entire trial was a fraud; it was based on unfounded charges that were never properly before the Court."

Chauvin's team is asking the Minnesota Court of Appeals to pause his current appeal so the trial court can evaluate these new claims.

This is his third petition for post-conviction relief.

The first two failed.

This one is different because it is the first to attack the legal foundation of the prosecution itself – not just what happened at trial.

The Same Two Men Are Now Under Federal Investigation

Tim Walz and Keith Ellison are not just political figures Chauvin's team is targeting.

They are both currently subjects of a DOJ criminal referral.

In June 2026, Vice President JD Vance referred both men to the Justice Department after a House Oversight Committee report found they knew about nearly $9 billion in fraudulent Medicaid payments and $300 million in stolen child nutrition funds for years – and did nothing.

Walz already dropped his re-election bid over the scandal.

Ellison called it a "political stunt" and kept his head down.

Walz and Ellison prosecuted a cop with charges their own county attorney refused to bring, bypassed a grand jury to do it, and called it justice.

Those same two men let fraudsters drain federal nutrition and Medicaid programs for years and called that justice too.

The Minnesota Attorney General's office declined to comment on the new petition.

Of course they did.

If the structural error argument prevails, Chauvin does not just get a new trial.

The conviction gets thrown out entirely – because Tim Walz made sure a court that never had legal jurisdiction over this case sent a cop to prison for 22 and a half years anyway.

Sources:

  • Kelsie Cairns, "Derek Chauvin targets George Floyd murder conviction with new claims his prosecution was unlawful," Fox News, August 19, 2026.
  • "Chauvin files request for stay of appeal on state murder charges," AM 1100 The Flag/WZFG, August 18, 2026.
  • "Derek Chauvin seeks dismissal of charges, alleging 'fraudulent' and 'unlawful' conduct by Walz, Ellison," World Tribune, August 19, 2026.
  • "Derek Chauvin asks state to overturn conviction in George Floyd case due to lack of Grand Jury," The Post Millennial, August 19, 2026.
  • "Derek Chauvin Seeks To Dismiss Charges In Death Of George Floyd," ZeroHedge, August 19, 2026.
  • "Vance refers Tim Walz, Minnesota attorney general to DOJ for criminal investigation over state's alleged fraud," Fox News, June 9, 2026.
  • "JD Vance refers Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, state AG Keith Ellison to DOJ for fraud probe," The Hill, June 9, 2026.