President Biden called George Floyd’s family to say he is praying for them, brother says

As the world waits for the verdict in the trial of the former Minneapolis police officer charged with murder in George Floyd’s death, Floyd’s younger brother said Tuesday that President Joe Biden called his family.

“He was just calling,” Philonise Floyd said of the Monday call on NBC’s “TODAY” show. “He knows how it is to lose a family member, and he knows the process of what we’re going through. So he was just letting us know that he was praying for us, hoping that everything will come out to be OK.”

After closing arguments Monday, Floyd said he’s “optimistic” about the outcome of the trial against Derek Chauvin.

“Me and my family, we pray about it every day,” Floyd said. I just feel that in America, if a Black man can’t get justice for this, what can a Black man get justice for?”

He said the case was a “pivotal point.”

While demonstrators and protesters will likely take to the streets regardless of the trial’s outcome, Floyd asked for them to be “peaceful.”

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“But at the same time, I can’t stop people from doing the things that they’re doing because people are in pain,” Floyd said, adding that Daunte Wright was killed by a police officer following a routine traffic stop just 10 miles from the court room where Chauvin is being tried. “They’re hurt.”

The case lies with the jury, but the judge in the trial said Monday that recent comments by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., urging protesters in Minnesota to “get more confrontational” if Chauvin is not convicted could be grounds for the defense to appeal a verdict.

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said Tuesday that the move “was the defense’s desperate attempt to distract us further.”

“The jurors have been given instructions to only pay attention to the evidence that happens in the court of law and not to watch TV or watch the news, and I believe the jurors are following the instructions of the court,” Crump said.

“It’s only when there’s a Black person killed by a police officer that we come up with all these distractions … and say ‘Oh, we want to give every opportunity for the officer to be exonerated,’ ” he said. “And that’s why the whole world is on edge.”