George Floyd’s Family May Sue Kanye West for Saying Floyd’s Death Was Caused by Fentanyl

Kanye West is drawing outrage for his latest inflammatory comments, this time about the killing of George Floyd. During a recent interview, the embattled rapper publicly blamed Floyd’s death on fentanyl and dismissed the fact that former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. The Floyd family is mulling legal action over West’s statement.

Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who represented Floyd’s family, acknowledged that while “one cannot defame the dead,” there may be other legal options “for Kanye’s false statements about the manner of [Floyd’s] death.”

“Claiming Floyd died from fentanyl not the brutality established criminally and civilly undermines & diminishes the Floyd family’s fight,” Merritt tweeted.

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West spoke about Floyd’s death on a new episode of the Drink Champs podcast. The entrepreneur, who goes by Ye, talked about watching conservative commentator and friend Candace Owens’s new documentary The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM.

“I watched the George Floyd documentary that Candace Owens put out. 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,” West said. “They hit [Floyd] with the fentanyl. If you look, the guy’s knee wasn’t even on his neck like that.”

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