Legal analyst and retired attorney Mark Pulliam, who endorsed former federal prosecutor TJ Harker’s forthcoming book American Scapegoat: How a Corrupt Justice System Sacrificed Derek Chauvin to the Mob after reading its galley proofs, previewed the book and its central arguments during Monday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Harker’s book, scheduled for publication December 1 by Passage Press, argues that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was wrongfully convicted in the 2020 death of George Floyd and that political pressure, public outrage, and failures within the criminal justice system influenced the case.
Pulliam described Harker as a former federal and state prosecutor who “knows his way around criminal law, knows his way around the courtroom.”
Pulliam said the book examines what he characterized as a “travesty of justice” and “miscarriage of justice,” arguing that relevant facts surrounding Floyd’s death were overlooked.
“This was a travesty of justice,” Pulliam said. “This was a miscarriage of justice, and that all of the relevant facts got lost in the process.”
Pulliam also questioned the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s death, pointing to Floyd’s drug use and the medical evidence presented during Chauvin’s trial.
“He had a lethal amount of fentanyl in his system according to the autopsy,” Pulliam said, going on to also cite Floyd’s heart condition and pulmonary edema while arguing that the prosecution’s theory of the case changed during the trial.
Pulliam criticized the handling of Chauvin’s trial, including the rejection of a change-of-venue request and the disparity in legal representation between the prosecution and defense.
“There were some things he could’ve done better, but I’m not sure given the mismatch, and the fix was in,” Pulliam said of Chauvin’s defense attorney.
He also pointed to the $27 million settlement between Minneapolis and Floyd’s family, which was announced while the jury was being selected, as part of what he described as an unfair trial environment.
Pulliam ultimately characterized Chauvin as a political prisoner.
“A lot of people have this idea that only bad people get punished and innocent people are always vindicated,” Pulliam said. “That’s not true, that if there’s an agenda, and there was an agenda here—with a rush to judgment, they picked the scapegoat, and they made sure that the scapegoat got the treatment that they wanted. It does not reflect well on, certainly, the state of Minnesota. It doesn’t reflect well on the mentality that existed in the United States in that terrible summer of love, where so many bad things happened, and nobody seemed to be willing or able to discern what was right and what was wrong.”
“So I regard Derek Chauvin as a political prisoner, and that this is the worst miscarriage of justice I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he added.
Pulliam urged listeners to check out Harker’s book, noting, “This is definitely a book worth reading and a sober lesson about what can happen when we let our legal system get into the hands of crazy leftists…One of the things that this should be is a wake-up call to Americans that we cannot allow our legal system to be corrupted and taken over.”
The book is available for preorder on Amazon.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
