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Kanye West‘s latest comments may cause him legal trouble.
Attorney Lee Merritt, who represents the family of George Floyd, says they are considering a lawsuit against West for comments he made about the cause of Floyd’s death.
“I watched the George Floyd documentary that Candace Owens put out,” Ye said in a clip of a recently taped episode of the Drink Champs podcast. “One of the things that his two roommates said was they want a tall guy like me, and the day that he died, he said a prayer for eight minutes. They hit him with the fentanyl.”
Ye added, “If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”
The rapper’s comments sparked outrage on the internet and prompted Merritt to release a statement on behalf of the Floyd family.
“While one cannot defame the dead, the family of #GeorgeFloyd is considering suit for Kanye’s false statements about the manner of his death,” Merritt wrote on Twitter. “Claiming Floyd died from fentanyl not the brutality established criminally and civilly undermines & diminishes the Floyd family’s fight.”
During the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who held his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than 9 minutes, a medical expert testified that Floyd died from a lack of oxygen to his brain.
“Mr. Floyd died from a low level of oxygen. And this caused damage to his brain that we see, and it also caused a [Pulseless Electrical Activity] arrhythmia that caused his heart to stop,” Dr. Martin Tobin explained.
The full Kanye West x Drink Champs interview is not currently available on YouTube; there is a short teaser clip featuring host N.O.R.E and his response to Ye’s comments.
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