It has been almost four years since George Floyd’s death in police custody sparked riots in American cities and protests around the world. Since then, the public, thanks to the reporting of mainstream journalists, has settled on a consensus about what happened to Floyd on the evening of May 25, 2020: officers were in the process of arresting Floyd for paying with counterfeit money at a convenience store when Officer Derek Chauvin, with conscious cruelty, subjected him to his “signature move”—a knee on the neck—cutting off his oxygen supply and murdering him. Officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane, and Tou Thao, rather than intervene, aided and abetted Chauvin’s crime.

If journalism is the first draft of history, then this draft is now due for a major revision. …

Like everyone who watched this clip, I was horrified when I saw it. I could not understand why Chauvin continued to keep his knee on Floyd’s neck when he clearly couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even understand why they put him belly-down on the pavement in the first place—a humiliating and uncomfortable position—rather than in the back of the squad car.

But the viral clip, as so many often do, started in the middle of the story.

[Read it all, although much of this will be familiar to readers already, especially those who watched the Alpha News documentary “The Fall of Minneapolis.” My friends at Power Line covered all of these issues repeatedly over the last few years as well. — Ed]