Claim: Photo shows Joe Biden kneel before George Floyd’s son to beg for forgiveness
Source: Facebook Posts
Verdict: FALSE
Researched by Gifty Tracy Aminu
A picture showing the President of the United States of America, Joseph Biden bending on one knee before a little boy is being widely shared on Facebook, with some users claiming he was begging George Floyd’s son for forgiveness.
A number of Facebook posts of the image (here, here, here, here, and here) come with a caption: “U.S. President Joe Biden kneels down to beg George Floyd’s son for forgiveness. The same kneeling position that killed Floyd. Minneapolis City Government awards Floyd’s family $27 million, as killers face trial.”
Leading content discovery and social monitoring platform for publishers and brands, Crowdtangle shows there have been more than 25,000 interactions on Facebook on the subject.
Who is George Floyd?
George Perry Floyd Jr. was an African American man murdered by police during an arrest in Minneapolis.
Derek Chauvin, one of four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd’s neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds and a video of the encounter went viral, sparking worldwide protests against racism and excessive use of force by police.
A US jury subsequently found Derek Chauvin guilty in a murder trial and convicted him of all charges in the death of George Floyd.
Fact-check
Using a reverse image search engine, TinEye, GhanaFact found the image was captured during a campaign visit by then-candidate Biden to Michigan in 2020 and is now being mischaracterized.
The image can be traced to international photo agency Getty Images, who captioned it “Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden kneels to chat with C.J. Brown while shopping at Three Thirteen, an apparel store on the city’s Avenue of Fashion, September 09, 2020, in Detroit, Michigan.”
A video of the whole interaction can also be found here.
In Ghana, the same image has been misleadingly used in the past to portray a meeting between Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Ghanaian actor, Stephen Atanga popularly known as Don Little ( here and here).
Has the city of Minneapolis awarded George Floyd’s family $27million?
True. The city of Minneapolis has agreed to pay $27 million to the family of George Floyd.
The family’s attorney, Ben Crump said it was the largest pretrial settlement in a civil rights wrongful death case in U.S. history.
Verdict
The claim that US President Joseph Biden was begging George Floyd’s son for forgiveness is FALSE. The image showing US President Joseph Biden bending on one knee before a little boy is being misleadingly portrayed in the Facebook posts.
