Donald Trump Jr has suggested that the family of George Floyd is attempting to sue rapper Kanye West for financial gain after he claimed that Mr Floyd’s death was caused by fentanyl.
Mr Trump Jr posted screenshots from three articles on Wednesday. A headline from CNN dated June 2020 states that Mr West donated $2m and paid for the college tuition for Mr Floyd’s daughter.
A piece in Rolling Stone magazine said Mr Floyd’s family was preparing to sue the rapper for $250m. The magazine reported that the lawsuit concerning the false allegations would be filed on behalf of Mr Floyd’s daughter.
Mr Trump Jr also posted a screenshot from a TMZ story posted on 18 October concerning the lawsuit.
“Just like the rest of the BLM scam no good deed goes unpunished,” Mr Trump Jr wrote in the caption. “You can do some amazing things for people but when the opportunity to get more $$$ arises it’s all forgotten… the BLM and media/analogies just write themselves at this point.”
West recently appeared on the Drink Champs podcast, on which he discussed the documentary The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM by right-wing commentator Candace Owens.
The rapper claimed that Mr Floyd’s death was caused by the synthetic opioid fentanyl. Medical experts found the cause to be asphyxiation. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was later convicted of murdering Mr Floyd after kneeling on his neck for nine minutes on 25 May 2020.
In April of last year, Mr Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.
“They hit [Floyd] with the fentanyl. If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that,” West said on the podcast.
The rapper has changed his legal name to Ye.
Roxie Washington, Mr Floyd’s daughter, is a minor. Attorneys representing her said on Tuesday that they were preparing to sue Mr West for “misappropriation, defamation and infliction of emotional distress,” according to Newsweek.
Nuru Witherspoon with the Witherspoon Law Group said in a statement that “the interests of the child are priority. George Floyd’s daughter is being retraumatized by Kanye West’s comments and he’s creating an unsafe and unhealthy environment for her”.
Pat Dixon of Dixon & Dixon Attorneys at Law added that “Kanye’s comments are a repugnant attempt to discount George Floyd’s life and to profit from his inhumane death. We will hold Mr West accountable for his flagrant remarks against Mr Floyd’s legacy”.
Attorney Andrew Lieb of Lieb at Law told Newsweek that “conservative media has misled its audience into thinking that the First Amendment provides unlimited freedom of speech. That is not the law throughout the United States. Instead, the First Amendment only protects speech from governmental restrictions”.
“Make no mistake, the First Amendment does not permit anyone to make false material statements of fact about another,” he added. “Instead, that will get you sued for defamation amongst other claims.”
