Does photo show Derek Chauvin smiling on stage at Trump rally? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

Messages on social media claim to show former police officer Derek Chauvin smiling on stage at a Donald Trump rally wearing a “cops for Trump” t-shirt and holding a “law & order, vote Trump” sign.

Derek Chauvin is the Minneapolis police officer who has been named as the officer that knelt on the neck of George Floyd, a black man that subsequently died in hospital after he was arrested by police.

FALSE

The photo spreading is below.

Despite the photo spreading rapidly on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the smiling man on stage with Trump is not Derek Chauvin.

The man is police officer Mike Gallagher, from the Bloomington Police Department. We managed to track down a public video of Gallagher in this video where he discusses the challenges of policing during winter weather. The screenshot below of Gallagher compared to the man at the Trump rally reveals it is clearly the same person.

This was also confirmed by Minneapolis police union president Lt. Bob Kroll, who also identified the man in the photos at Mike Gallagher.

As such, we rank this claim false.

Other claims that Chauvin was pictured wearing a “Make Whites Great Again” hat are also false and we discuss them here.

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