Ye claimed on a recent podcast that Floyd, who was killed in 2020 at the hands of Minneapolis police, actually died as a result of fentanyl use.
The rapper’s claims have previously been refuted by experts and Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker who testified that while Floyd’s heart disease and use of fentanyl were contributing factors to his death, they were not the direct cause. Dr. Vik Bebarta, an emergency physician, toxicologist, and professor at the University of Colorado in Denver, said Floyd died because of how Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for over nine minutes as the 46-year-old told officers, “I can’t breathe.”
In the news release announcing the suit, lawyers for Roxie Washington, the mother of Gianna Floyd, said Ye made “false statements about George Floyd’s death to promote his brands and increase marketing value and revenue for himself, his business partners, and associates.” Ye stated “malicious falsehoods” about Floyd in an attempt to profit off of his death and his family’s trauma, per the release.
“The interests of the child are priority,” Attorney Nuru Witherspoon, partner at The Witherspoon Law Group, said in a statement. “George Floyd’s daughter is being traumatized by Kanye West’s comments and he’s creating an unsafe and unhealthy environment for her.”
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