FBI Indeed Spied on Protesting Parents, House Judiciary Finds

Ken Silva
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FBI Indeed Spied on Protesting Parents, House Judiciary Finds

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The House Weaponization Subcommittee released a report Tuesday, confirming that the FBI spied on parents who protested COVID-19 restrictions and other issues at school board meetings.

By revealing that the FBI opened at least 25 “Guardian assessments,” Tuesday’s report undercuts Attorney General Merrick Garland’s claim that the FBI only investigated legitimate threats of violence against educators.

That’s because an FBI “assessment” is a constitutionally dubious category that allows the bureau to conduct surveillance against a target without a factual predicate of criminal wrongdoing. “Guardian” is an internal FBI system that tracks cases linked to terrorism.

Of the 25 guardian assessments of school board threats, the FBI determined that only one warranted opening a full investigation, according to the report. None of the assessments have resulted in federal prosecutions, the report said.

The report said its findings supplement FBI whistleblower disclosures, including allegations that the FBI investigated a mom because she belonged to a “right-wing mom’s group” and a dad because “he rails against the government.”

“This weaponization of law-enforcement powers against American parents exercising their First Amendment rights is dangerous,” the report said.

The FBI’s surveillance of protesting parents stems from the National School Boards Association’s September 2021 letter to President Biden, requesting federal law enforcement assistance to target parents voicing concerns at local school board meetings. That letter led to an Oct, 4, 2021, memorandum from Garland that directed the FBI to establish a “threat tag” to investigate Americans.

The NSBA has since rescinded its letter to Garland and apologized for it, but Garland’s memo is still in effect. The Weaponization Subcommittee, which was formed this year to investigate the weaponization of federal government, urged Garland to finally retract his memo.

“It is crystal clear that Attorney General Garland should rescind his unwise and unsupported directive to insert federal law enforcement into local school board matters,” the subcommittee’s report said.

The FBI’s use of assessments is something that has drawn the attention of lawmakers in the past. Last March, Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Jamie Raskin, D-N.Y., wrote a letter to Government Accountability Office requesting an audit of the bureau’s practice.

According to the letter, the FBI opened 11,667 assessments of individuals and groups between December 2008 and March 2009; only 427 developed into full investigations based on information collected. By 2011, the FBI had opened 82,235 similar assessments with fewer than 4,000 yielding any factual predicate to proceed with more intensive inquiries, the letter said.

“The FBI has opened investigations into people without any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, undermining our right to free speech and due process under the First Amendment,” Mace wrote last March.

“Under the FBI’s 2008 guidelines, the Agency is free to use ‘intrusive investigative techniques,’ including informants and unlimited physical surveillance, on individuals and groups without any link to criminality. This is scary, and it is a violation of the Constitution, plain and simple.”

The GAO did not immediately respond to a Headline USA email asking whether it has begun its review of FBI assessments. Neither Mace nor Raskin have provided updates since issuing their letter.

It’s not clear whether the FBI’s 25 Guardian assessments are still open. FBI policy requires agents to interview the targets of guardian assessments before closing them.

Famed Biologist Uses Facts To Prove There Are Only Two Sexes

Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji Bello
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Famed Biologist Uses Facts To Prove There Are Only Two Sexes

(Abdul–Rahman Oladimeji Bello, Headline USA) Famous British biologist Richard Dawkins recently confirmed that there are only two sexes biologically.

Dawkins made the proclamation during an appearance on Piers Morgan’s Uncensored, where the duo discussed efforts from the LGBTQ community concentrated on erasing sex and gender from speech, the Daily Wire reported.

“What is troubling to me is that they want to — what they call ‘de-gender’ and neutralize language,” Morgan said. “But they’re doing it from a completely false pretense, that you can somehow pretend biology doesn’t exist.”

Morgan also pointed out that LGBT activists have surprisingly succeeded in their quest to an extent, even if it might be temporarily. 

Dawkins agreed, noting that he has also seen how activists bullied people like J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock for simply stating that only two sexes exist. 

“They’ve stood up to it. But it’s very upsetting, the way this tiny minority of people has managed to capture the discourse and to really talk errant nonsense,” Dawkins said. “There are two sexes. You can talk about gender if you wish. I’m not interested in that. As a biologist, there are two sexes and that’s all there is to it.”

Morgan noted that Dawkins had already received heat for his stand on the topic, drawing fire from critics for stating scientific facts.

In April 2021, Dawkins tweeted, “In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.” However, this tweet cost Dawkins a humanist award.

Maintaining his stand on the topic, Dawkins noted that he would continue to use every word prohibited by the LGBT community as he is a ‘professional user of the English language,” according to reports from Fox News.

“The only possible response is contemptuous ridicule,” Dawkins said.

Idaho Aims to Allow Firing-Squad Executions in Some Cases

Wire Editor
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Idaho Aims to Allow Firing-Squad Executions in Some Cases

(Headline USA) Idaho is poised to allow firing squads to execute condemned inmates when the state can’t get lethal-injection drugs, under a bill the Legislature passed Monday with a veto-proof majority.

Firing squads will be used only if the state cannot obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections — and one death row inmate has already had his scheduled execution postponed multiple times because of drug scarcity.

The move by Idaho lawmakers is in line with those by other states that in recent years have scrambled to revive older methods of execution because of difficulties obtaining drugs required for longstanding lethal injection programs. Pharmaceutical companies increasingly have barred executioners from using their drugs, saying they were meant to save lives, not take them.

Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little has voiced his support for the death penalty but generally does not comment on legislation before he signs or vetoes it.

Only Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and South Carolina currently have laws allowing firing squads if other execution methods are unavailable, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. South Carolina’s law is on hold pending the outcome of a legal challenge.

Some states began refurbishing electric chairs as standbys for when lethal drugs are unavailable. Others have considered — and at times, used — largely untested execution methods. In 2018, Nevada executed Carey Dean Moore with a never-before-tried drug combination that included the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. Alabama has built a system for executing people using nitrogen gas to induce hypoxia, but it has not yet been used.

During a historic round of 13 executions in the final months of Donald Trump’s presidency, the federal government opted for the sedative pentobarbital as a replacement for lethal drugs used in the 2000s. It issued a protocol allowing firing squads for federal executions if necessary, but that method was not used.

Some lawyers for federal inmates who were eventually put to death argued in court that firing squads actually would be quicker and cause less pain than pentobarbital, which they said causes a sensation akin to drowning.

However, in a 2019 filing, U.S. lawyers cited an expert as saying someone shot by firing squad can remain conscious for 10 seconds and that it would be “severely painful, especially related to shattering of bone and damage to the spinal cord.”

President Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, ordered a temporary pause on federal executions in 2021 while the Justice Department reviewed protocols. Garland did not say how long the moratorium will last.

Idaho Sen. Doug Ricks, a Republican who co-sponsored that state’s firing squad bill, told his fellow senators Monday that the state’s difficulty in finding lethal injection drugs could continue “indefinitely” and that he believes death by firing squad is “humane.”

“This is a rule of law issue — our criminal system should work and penalties should be exacted,” Ricks said.

But Sen. Dan Foreman, also a Republican, said firing-squad executions would traumatize the people who who carry them out, the people who witness them and the people who clean up afterward.

“I’ve seen the aftermath of shootings, and it’s psychologically damaging to anybody who witnesses it,” Foreman said. “The use of the firing squad is, in my opinion, beneath the dignity of the state of Idaho.”

The bill originated with Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug, prompted in part by the state’s inability to execute Gerald Pizzuto Jr. late last year. Pizzuto, who now has terminal cancer and other debilitating illnesses, has spent more than three decades on death row for his role in the 1985 slayings of two gold prospectors.

The Idaho Department of Correction estimates it will cost around $750,000 to build or retrofit a death chamber for firing squad executions.

Agency Director Jeff Tewalt last year told lawmakers there would likely be as many legal challenges to planned firing squad executions as there are to lethal injections. At the time, he said he would be reluctant to ask his staffers to participate in a firing squad.

Both Tewalt and his former co-worker Kevin Kempf played a key role in obtaining the drugs used in the 2012 execution of Richard Albert Leavitt, flying to Tacoma, Washington, with more than $15,000 in cash to buying them from a pharmacist. The trip was kept secret by the department but revealed in court documents after University of Idaho professor Aliza Cover sued for the information under a public records act.

Kempf was promoted to lead the Correction Department two years later and now is the executive director of the Correctional Leaders Association. He said the execution process is always challenging for all involved, including victims’ relatives. Those challenges could be amplified in firing squad executions, he said.

“I’ve got to say at the same time, my thoughts go to staff members that may have to carry out something, per law, that looks like putting someone to death,” Kempf told the AP during a phone interview earlier this month. “That is nothing I would assume any correctional director would take lightly, asking someone-slash-ordering someone to do that.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Oversight Committee Opens Probe into Biden’s Baby Formula Shortage

Molly Bruns
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Oversight Committee Opens Probe into Biden’s Baby Formula Shortage

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) The House Oversight and Accountability Committee, headed by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., is launching an investigation into the baby formula shortage that took place at the beginning of 2022.

Comer, along with Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services Chairwoman Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf announcing the investigation and requesting documentation on the Biden administration’s actions in the wake of the discovery.

The committee laid into the FDA and the Biden administration for not doing anything about the crisis, according to the Daily Wire.

“The Reagan-Udall Foundation’s report titled ‘Operational Evaluation of the FDA Human Foods Program,’ found that there was ‘little motivation, and no requirement,’ to ‘facilitate critical thinking and proactive decision-making’ during the infant formula shortage,” the legislators wrote. “Despite this report, and the acknowledged need for a major overhaul, you stated that there would be no reassignments nor firings over the administration’s response to the infant formula shortage.”

Comer also pointed out that instead of holding the responsible parties accountable, they simply shuffled their staff members from the food and nutrition division to similar jobs with different titles.

“The Committee is concerned that the FDA’s restructuring is a superficial attempt—rather than a real effort—to bring accountability and make meaningful changes,” the letter added.

The documents requested include communications between the White House, the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services; information about the FDA’s reorganization plan within the nutrition division; the hiring, reassignment and firing deliberations for individuals involved in the crisis; and more.

The deadline for sending the documents is April 4.

The Biden administration worked through a series of underhanded deals throughout the formula shortage in early 2022, expanding the power of the FDA, staging photo ops and even sending formula to the southern border.

Families are reportedly still suffering from the effects of the scarcity, with many stores across the nation still reporting low or no stock of many formula brands. Several factories that produced formula are under government investigation with no sign of change.

Nevada Gov. Slams Biden Administration’s Latest Land Grab

Robert Jonathan
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Nevada Gov. Slams Biden Administration’s Latest Land Grab

(Robert Jonathan, Headline USA)  Nevada’s newly elected Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo castigated the Biden administration for what he described as a flagrantly mistaken “federal confiscation” of 500,000-plus acres of land for a national monument.

The former sheriff of Clark County said he and his team were left out of the loop as the feds formulated a “unilateral” and anti-business decision to establish the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in a region that includes historic Spirit Mountain.

“Upon learning that the President was considering unilateral action, I reached out to the White House to raise several concerns, citing the potential for terminal disruption of rare earth mineral mining projects and long-planned, bi-partisan economic development efforts,” Lombardo declared.

However, Lombardo said the White House ignored his input when he found out what administration had in mind.

In a strongly worded statement, the governor decried the D.C.-centric approach that he maintains will prove harmful to the southern Nevada economy.

“This kind of ‘Washington Knows Best’ policy might win plaudits from unaccountable special interests, but it’s going to cost our state jobs and economic opportunity—all while making land more expensive and more difficult to develop for affordable housing and critical infrastructure projects,” he said. “The federal confiscation of 506,814 acres of Nevada land is a historic mistake that will cost Nevadans for generations to come.”

Native American tribes consider Spirit Mountain and its environs to be sacred and have long advocated for the area to be protected.

But libertarians supporting property rights and state sovereignty have slammed previous land-grab efforts during the Obama administration to proceed unilaterally in abusing the 1906 Antiquities Act to further extend its own real-estate portfolio.

The presence of rare-earth metal deposits further roils some who note that government regulations prohibiting private, domestic mining ventures will only increase American dependence on China for production of green-energy essentials such as lithium batteries.

This is hardly the first time that the environmentalists in the cohort running the current administration have engaged in top-down, centralized planning.

For instance, in a 2021, Biden expanded federal management of the approximately 3.2-million-acre Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase national monuments in Utah.

This has prompted a still-pending lawsuit filed by Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, who, along with other state elected officials from the governor on down named as plaintiffs, called the action a “federal overreach” without proper collaboration with Congress or stakeholders.

VP of Atlanta Nonprofit Discovered to Be Violent Antifa Extremist

Molly Bruns
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VP of Atlanta Nonprofit Discovered to Be Violent Antifa Extremist

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Recent reports reveal that a high-ranking official of an Atlanta-based nonprofit that produces media in support of activist groups also acts as a radical Antifa extremist, and is currently in the midst of organizing an armed military camp to “take out” alleged fascists.

River-Michael Les Sewell, 25, is leading an organized group of left-wing activists in the fight against Atlanta’s Public Safety Training Center, also known as “Cop City.”

According to the Post Millennial, Sewell “advocates for killing political opponents” and is using his experience and training from the army to instruct other mostly peaceful protestors to inflict violence on police officers.

Sewell is also a rapper, and released a song titled “Civil Disobedience” in 2022, calling for seizure of the means of production and raging against “neo-liberal corruption.”

He has not been shy about his intentions, and liberally posts on social media about his plans to provide weaponry and training to other activists.

“We all gone die,” Sewell wrote in a post. “Earth is f*ckered. Might as well just take some fash out first.”

Sewell acts as vice president of a nonprofit called Mixdeity, a media 501(c)3 that provides grants to artists in music, entertainment and design. The group received over $40,000 in COVID funding, and a massive loan from the Paycheck Protection Program forgiven.

He also applied to be a teacher in the Atlanta area, and expressed disgust on social media when subjected to a background check in order to work with children.

His post claimed he argued he wasn’t “murderin and robbin people,” when the police asked for his prints.

“I only did that for the US government when I was a Ranger, but its okay when you rob and kill people for the government,” he added.

Cop City recently faced a violent riot, where Antifa militants burned much of the training center and clashed with police officers.

Rioters planned the event as a reactive “night of rage” after a police officer killed an Antifa comrade, who reportedly opened fire on the officers in an attempt to establish an autonomous zone.

Hollywood Producer: Oversight of Bragg’s Prosecutorial Misconduct is RACIST

Jacob Bruns
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Hollywood Producer: Oversight of Bragg’s Prosecutorial Misconduct is RACIST

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Hollywood producer and screenwriter John Ridley lectured the American people in a “Morning Joe” appearance on Tuesday, insisting that white GOP congressmen should not question the actions of black Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Ridley, best known for the Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave, went out of his way to defend the George Soros-backed Bragg, whose integrity has been called into question by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., among others.

Bragg stands accused of prosecutorial misconduct for his efforts to indict former President Donald Trump in the long-simmering probe of alleged hush-money payments to porn-star Stormy Daniels.

In particular, Ridley’s rant targeted McCarthy, who recently asserted that Bragg’s machinations are “just political.”

“What I hear from privileged white men talking about the weaponization of the law, they don’t know what they are talking about,” Ridley began.

“As a black man, the law has been weaponized against us, going back to the Constitution and being considered three-fifths of human beings,” he added, alluding to the three-fifths compromise that helped compel slaveholding states to ratify the U.S. Constitution by granting them more voting power.

Ridley proceeded to mention a laundry list of historical grievances, including “slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, the Chinese Exclusion Act.”

He also railed against what some perceive to be police brutality.

“As black and brown people, we’re told that part of the problem with negative interactions between community and police is that we don’t comply… that we don’t listen to law enforcement,” he said.

According to the movie producer, black men should not have to answer to white men, even if summoned to appear before Congress.

“When you have the Kevin McCarthys of the world saying to a black prosecutor, you need to come in and answer questions—yeah, I’m sorry, we’re not living on the plantation anymore,” Ridley said.

Ridley was not the only figure on the Left who frantically sought to push back on Republicans for threatening to hold Bragg accountable.

Freshman Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., considered by some to be the protégé of serial liar Adam Schiff, D-Calif., pushed the backward claim that GOP lawmakers were trying to “obstruct” Bragg’s probe by threatening to call him before Congress, Breitbart reported.

UN Updates Timeline for Climate Apocalypse

Jacob Bruns
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UN Updates Timeline for Climate Apocalypse

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) The United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—a group of scientists who make a living promoting climate alarmism—has updated the world on how long it has left to live, the Post Millennial reported.

According to the recently released report, humanity can be saved only if the lives of people across the world are reordered according to scientific principles.

“Climate resilient development becomes progressively more challenging with every increment of warming,” they wrote. “This is why the choices made in the next few years will play a critical role in deciding our future and that of generations to come.”

Yet, skeptics contend that climate scientists have been making the same hyperbolic claims—and then shifting the goalposts—for the past half century.

Like its precursors, new UN report maintains that fighting climate change, though it may require massive reorganization, will help improve economic growth and living standards.

“The economic benefits for people’s health from air quality improvements alone would be roughly the same, or possibly even larger than the costs of reducing or avoiding emissions,” they wrote.

In order to save the world, they suggested cutting carbon emissions by nearly two-thirds by the year 2035, with a total elimination of fossil fuels by 2040.

Right on cue, the panel also declared that climate change is racist.

“Climate justice is crucial because those who have contributed least to climate change are being disproportionately affected,” said Aditi Mukherji, one of the scientists involved in the report.

“Almost half of the world’s population lives in regions that are highly vulnerable to climate change,“ she added. “In the last decade, deaths from floods, droughts and storms were 15 times higher in highly vulnerable regions.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres got in on the fun as well, penning his own, parallel report, which argued that “we need climate action on all fronts—everything, everywhere, all at once.” He put forward an “Acceleration Agenda” for forcing the nations into climate change activism.

Unfortunately, the fear-mongering UN rhetoric has often caused embarrassing gaffes as they predict doom-and-gloom that never arrives.

Their warning, for example, undercut the narrative of child-activist Greta Thunberg, who predicted in a 2018 tweet that humanity would be dead by 2023 if it continued to use fossil fuels.

She recently deleted the tweet in question.

The U.S. government also has been forced to admit its folly in prematurely predicting a climate apocalypse.

In January 2020, for instance, the National Park Service quietly updated signs it installed during the Obama administration that claimed the eponymous attraction at Montana’s Glacier National Park would have melted away by the end of the year.

Judge Kyle Duncan to Speak at Notre Dame after Stanford Law Ambush

Jacob Bruns
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Judge Kyle Duncan to Speak at Notre Dame after Stanford Law Ambush

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Newly famous Fifth Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan will continue to honor his university speaking schedule, despite having recently been shouted down by left-wing activists at Stanford Law School.

Duncan accepted an invitation from the conservative Federalist Society to speak at the University of Notre Dame, which made the announcement in a recent statement, the Washington Times reported.

“The event is co-sponsored by Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, the Notre Dame Law School’s Federalist Society Chapter, and the Federalist Society Freedom of Thought Project,” the university wrote.

Appropriately, Duncan’s talk will be titled “Free Speech and Legal Education in Our Liberal Democracy.”

It remains to be seen how campus leftists will respond.

Judge Duncan was met by over 100 student protesters as he tried to deliver his remarks at Stanford on March 9.

When he asked an administrator to step in to quiet the students down, Tirien Steinbach, Stanford Law’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion came to the front and delivered prepared remarks in opposition to Duncan, who would later describe the event as a “struggle session” based upon “public shaming.”

The Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez issued a soft apology before university President Marc Tessier–Lavigne forced her to sign on to a more serious apology.

“What happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech, and we are very sorry about the experience you had while visiting our campus,” they wrote.

The administrators also added that they were “taking steps to ensure that something like this does not happen again,” but declined to articulate those steps in any detail.

They also committed to doing “better to ensure” that freedom of speech is protected, “even in polarized times.”

None of the riotous Stanford Law students have been punished for their antics.

New Case Supports Theory That Chauvin Was Patsy in Floyd Killing

Editor 1
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New Case Supports Theory That Chauvin Was Patsy in Floyd Killing

(Headline USA) Nearly three years after the Memorial Day death of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police shook to the core a nation already vulnerable from the coronavirus pandemic and divisive impeachment hearings of President Donald Trump, a motive may have emerged to explain why Floyd was allowed to suffocate on camera in plain view of an angry mob. 

While little has been reported on the personal life and circumstances of convicted Floyd killer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for a harrowing 9 minutes with a frightened look in his eyes, a new court case offers the possible smoking gun for those who think the disgraced ex-police officer may have been a patsy in a conspiracy designed to launch the election-year racial unrest that occurred.

Chauvin pleaded guilty Friday to two tax evasion counts, admitting that he didn’t file Minnesota income taxes for two years due to “financial concerns.”

This sparsely covered revelation opens the door to the possibility that a compromised Chauvin may have participated in a pre-planned scheme by left-wing conspirators seeking to engineer a crisis that would provide the necesary Overton window for the sort of massive racial “reckoning” that ultimately transpired.

Chauvin pleaded guilty specifically to two counts of aiding and abetting, failing to file tax returns to the state of Minnesota for the 2016 and 2017 tax years.

He appeared in a Minnesota court via Zoom from a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, where he is serving his sentences on a state murder conviction for killing Floyd and on a federal count of violating Floyd’s civil rights.

He stood in a room and paced around before Friday’s hearing began. When Washington County Judge Sheridan Hawley asked why he didn’t file his Minnesota tax returns, he told the judge: “The true reason is some financial concerns at the time.”

He also said: “I had to find significant funds from family to pay a previous year’s return and, frankly, I’ve been playing catch up ever since.”

He was sentenced to 13 months in prison on the tax charges, but he has already been incarcerated for longer than that and was given credit for time served.

Shortly after Floyd’s killing, Chauvin and his then-wife were charged with multiple counts for allegedly underreporting their income to the state of Minnesota and failing to file Minnesota tax returns. The complaints alleged that from 2014 to 2019, the Chauvins underreported their joint income by $464,433.

With unpaid taxes, interest and fees, the Chauvins, who have since divorced, owe $37,868 to the state, according to court documents.

The tax investigation began in June 2020, after the Minnesota Department of Revenue received information about suspicious filings by Derek Chauvin. The agency started an internal cursory review and then opened a formal investigation.

The probe ultimately found the Chauvins did not file state tax returns for 2016, 2017 or 2018, and did not report all of their income for 2014 and 2015. When tax returns for 2016 through 2019 were filed in June 2020, the Chauvins did not report all of their income in those years either, the complaints said.

The complaints said Chauvin was required to pay taxes on income from off-duty security work he did at several jobs between 2014 and 2020. Investigators believe that at one job he earned about $95,920 over those six years that was not reported.

His ex-wife, Kellie May Chauvin, pleaded guilty Feb. 24 to two counts of aiding and abetting their failure to file tax returns for 2016 and 2017. Her plea agreement called for three years of probation and restitution with no more than 45 days of community service. The other charges were dropped. Hawley said she will be sentenced May 12.

Kellie Chauvin filed for divorce shortly after Floyd’s death, and a judge approved the divorce last February under terms that were kept sealed. The judge rejected an initial proposed settlement that would have given Kellie Chauvin most of their property and money, which had fueled speculation that the Chauvins were trying to shield their assets.

Documents in the tax case said the couple owned a second home in Florida, and alleged they also failed to pay proper sales tax on a $100,000 BMW purchased in Minnesota in 2018.

Chauvin was convicted of state murder and manslaughter charges in 2021 and is serving 22 1/2 years in that case. He also pleaded guilty to a federal charge of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced to 21 years. He is serving the sentences concurrently.

Three other officers were convicted of federal charges of violating Floyd’s rights. Two of them have also been convicted of a state count of aiding and abetting manslaughter, while the third is waiting for a judge to decide his fate on the state charges.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

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