Tou Thao — one of the former Minneapolis police officers convicted in George Floyd's death — conducts his first long-form conversation since prison.
Schee sits down with Tou Thao, one of four former MPD officers behind one of the most scrutinized cases in modern American history, for a challenging but sincere conversation. Out of federal prison since last November and reunited with his family after three years, Thao speaks at length for the first time about his trials, his refusal to take a plea deal, the faith behind every choice, and why he believes his side of the George Floyd story was never heard.
--CHAPTERS --
00:00 - Coming Home: A Perspective Never Shared
05:29 - No Visits, No Plea, and the Sermon That Cost Him
14:43 - Shielded Power and the Off-Record Deal
22:53 - The Fong Lee Parallel
26:43 - A Trial About Thao's Actual State of Mind
36:52 - Prison Stabbings "If We Die, then theTruth Dies"
45:19 - The Body Camera Blackout52:02 - Which Right Side of History?
59:57 - The Walz Pardon Paradox
The conversation moves through the machinery of Thao's prosecution. Convicted of aiding and abetting, he contrasts his state case — a stipulated-evidence bench trial before Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, in which he waived a jury — with his federal civil rights trial before U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson. Thao argues both turned on the prosecution's reading of his mental state — the question of "willfulness" — more than his physical actions. He takes apart Cahill's 177-page sentencing decision that called him unremorseful, and alleges an informal plea offer of little-to-no prison time came through the Attorney General's office in an election year, which lead prosecutor Matthew Frank denied knowing of. These are Thao's allegations; the officials named have not corroborated them.
Much of the discussion centers on disputed Minneapolis Police Department training. Thao contends the Maximal Restraint Technique (MRT) was official MPD training, cites the testimony of MPD's Katie Blackwell, and alleges training materials vanished from the department's website afterward. On the body-camera controversy, he says he welcomed the cameras as protection and criticizes the delayed release of footage, arguing out-of-context clips shaped global perception until a European journalist forced the record out. His larger argument is about narrative: one iconic image read as a self-evident poster of racial oppression, and two non-white officers written out of a story they didn't fit.
Against that backdrop, Thao explains the line behind the title. Reflecting on the prison stabbing of his former co-defendant Derek Chauvin, he says the danger never surprised him — "if we die, then the truth dies" — casting his choice to speak now as a duty to expose what he calls a cover-up.
Because Thao and Schee are both Hmong and from the Twin Cities, the talk also opens onto the Hmong community: a parallel to the decades-old Fong Lee case, the politics of the "Hmong vote," a contrast Thao draws between his prosecution and pardons under Governor Tim Walz, and the Christian faith he says now governs how he understands his conviction and what comes next.
This isn't a neutral recitation — it's one participant's account, pressed on throughout. Schee challenges the framing where he sees openings, reckons with how his own view shifted since 2020, and is explicit that George Floyd was a human being whose life mattered and whose death no one wanted. The aim is understanding over tribalism: a public figure known mostly from seconds of footage, at length — for listeners to weigh.
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