# Michael O. Freeman *American attorney and politician; Hennepin County Attorney, 1991–1999 and 2007–2023* Michael Orville Freeman (born May 7, 1948) is a [[Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party]] attorney and politician. He held the office of Hennepin County Attorney twice: from January 7, 1991, to January 5, 1999, and from January 3, 2007, to January 2, 2023. Before that he represented District 40 in the [[Minnesota Senate]] from 1982 to 1991.[^1][^2][^3] His father, [[Orville Freeman]], was elected Governor of [[Minnesota]] on the DFL ticket in 1954.[^4] The project's record identifies four police-conduct matters as the most prominent of Freeman's second tenure. In two his office declined to bring charges, and in two it charged. In the largest, the George Floyd cases, Judge Peter Cahill disqualified Freeman and three of his staff lawyers on September 11, 2020. The team of the [[Minnesota Attorney General]], [[Keith Ellison]], then obtained Derek Chauvin's conviction on April 20, 2021.[^3][^5] The record establishes this sequence. It does not establish the reasons for it. After Freeman left office, the [[Hennepin County Attorney's Office]] under his successor adopted a plea-negotiation policy that listed "racial identity and age" among the factors prosecutors were to consider.[^6] The [[United States Department of Justice]] opened a civil rights investigation of that policy on May 5, 2025.[^7] It closed the investigation in February 2026 after the policy was amended.[^8] Separately, on January 14, 2026, the Department's Office of Public Affairs issued release No. 26-21, titled *United States Department of Justice Files Lawsuit Against Minnesota's 'Affirmative Action' Regime*. Attorney General Pamela Bondi certified that suit against the State as a matter of general public importance.[^9] ## Who Freeman was born in [[Minneapolis]] on May 7, 1948, and spent his early years there. The family moved to the Washington, D.C., area after his father entered President John F. Kennedy's cabinet as Secretary of Agriculture in January 1961.[^3][^10] Freeman completed high school at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Maryland. He took a B.A. at Rutgers University in 1970 and a J.D. at the [[University of Minnesota]] Law School in 1974.[^3][^11] Orville Freeman defeated [[C. Elmer Anderson]] on November 2, 1954, by 68,234 votes and became the first DFL governor of Minnesota.[^4][^12] According to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, he signed the state's Fair Employment Practices Act in 1955. The Act barred employment discrimination on the basis of race, color or creed.[^13] He later served as Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.[^3][^10] ## What ### Legislature Freeman won the Senate seat for the former District 40, which covered Richfield and part of Bloomington, in 1982. He won a second term in 1986 and was Majority Whip from 1987 to 1991. He was vice chair of the Finance Committee from 1987 to 1991 and vice chair of the Economic Development and Commerce Committee from 1983 to 1986. Over the same 1983–1986 period he chaired the Economic Development Subcommittee.[^1][^3] ### County attorney Freeman won the county attorney's office in the 1990 election and held it until 1999. He sought the office again in 2006, when the incumbent, [[Amy Klobuchar]], ran for the U.S. Senate seat that [[Mark Dayton]] was leaving. He won by a wide margin.[^3][^14] The Minnesota Supreme Court's opinion in *State v. Martinez*, No. A05-696 (Jan. 11, 2007), carries the caption "Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney".[^15] ### Campaigns for governor Freeman ran for governor twice. In 1994 he lost the DFL endorsement to [[John Marty]], who was then defeated by the incumbent governor, [[Arne Carlson]]. In 1998 Freeman won the endorsement but lost the DFL primary to [[Skip Humphrey]], who went on to lose the general election to [[Jesse Ventura]].[^3][^2] ### Police-conduct matters - **Jamar Clark (2016):** On March 30, 2016, the office announced that it would not charge Officers Ringgenberg and Schwarze in the shooting of Jamar Clark. The office cited forensic evidence, including Clark's DNA on an officer's gun.[^5] - **Thurman Blevins (2018):** The office declined to charge the officers. Body-camera footage showed that Blevins had fired at the officers before they returned fire.[^3] - **Mohamed Noor (2018):** The office charged Noor in the shooting death of Justine Damond. The project's dossier records that the case produced the first murder conviction of a Minnesota police officer for an on-duty killing.[^3][^2] - **George Floyd (2020):** The office charged Derek Chauvin and three other Minneapolis officers.[^3][^16] CBS News reported that Governor Tim Walz appointed Attorney General Ellison to lead the Floyd prosecution, bypassing the county attorney. The project's Time Table dates that appointment to May 26, 2020.[^17] The dossier records that a recall petition drive followed, citing the delay in charging and Freeman's refusal to recuse.[^3] On September 11, 2020, Judge Peter Cahill disqualified Freeman and three of his staff lawyers from the cases. The disqualification followed a meeting between staff and the medical examiner, in alleged violation of attorney conduct rules.[^3][^2] According to the dossier, Freeman nonetheless supplied "strategic advice and coordination" to Ellison's team, which obtained Chauvin's conviction on April 20, 2021.[^3] ## When In 2019 Freeman took a short leave of absence for treatment for alcohol addiction, and he then returned to the office.[^3] On September 1, 2021, about five months after the Chauvin verdict, he announced that he would retire at the end of his term. By then he had served 24 years as county attorney.[^3] His second tenure ended on January 2, 2023, when Mary Moriarty took office.[^1][^18] Moriarty announced on August 7, 2025, that she would not seek a second term; her term ends January 4, 2027.[^18] The 2026 election for the office proceeded from an August 11, 2026, primary to the November 3, 2026, general election.[^19] ## How many The four police-conduct matters set out above divide evenly: two declinations, in the Clark and Blevins cases, and two prosecutions, in the Noor and Floyd cases. Only in the Floyd prosecution was the office removed by the trial judge.[^3][^5] Three of the last four Hennepin County Attorneys are University of Minnesota law graduates. They are Tom Johnson (1970), county attorney from 1979 to 1991; Freeman (1974); and Moriarty (1989).[^20][^11][^18] The exception is Klobuchar, county attorney from January 5, 1999, to January 3, 2007. She earned her J.D. at the University of Chicago Law School in 1985, and she is the only one of the four who left the office for federal office.[^14] ## In the at-issue record The project pairs each item about Freeman and his office with a federal anchor document. The anchors are the White House presidential actions *Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity* (January 2025) and *Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos* (March 2025).[^21][^22] These pairings are the project's own; the anchor documents make no finding about Freeman. - [[At issue 003 - Michael O. Freeman held the Hennepin County Attorney's]]: the September 11, 2020, disqualification, anchored to the March 2025 action.[^22][^3] - [[At issue 020 - In the four highest-salience police-conduct matters of Michael]]: the two-declination, two-charge sequence, ending in the Attorney General completing the Floyd prosecution.[^22][^3] - [[At issue 012 - DOJ 25-469, May 5, 2025 It is unconstitutional]]: the 2025 federal investigation of the successor office's policy, anchored to the January 2025 action.[^21][^7] - [[At issue 015 - Three of the last four Hennepin County Attorneys]]: the law-school composition of the office's last four holders.[^21][^20] - [[At issue 018 - Nash's assistant took the chair in 1920, held]]: the item places Freeman's 1998 campaign for governor beside an earlier county attorney who held the office from 1920 and became governor in 1931.[^22] - [[At issue 097 - Michael Freeman announced his retirement on September 1]]: the September 1, 2021, retirement announcement, set in sequence with the April 2021 Chauvin conviction. The item states this as sequence, not causation.[^22][^3] - [[At issue 098 - Michael Freeman took a leave of absence in]]: the 2019 leave. The item's point is structural: the county attorney is elected, and the county board that funds the office cannot remove its holder.[^22][^3] ### Successor office policy and federal investigation On April 28, 2025, the office's Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants took effect. It provided: "While racial identity and age are not appropriate grounds for departures, proposed resolutions should consider the person charged as a whole person, including their racial identity and age."[^6] County Attorney Moriarty defended the policy: "This policy does not instruct our prosecutors to treat someone differently because of their race."[^23] On May 5, 2025, the Department of Justice announced civil rights investigation 25-469. Its release stated that the County Attorney "recently adopted a policy requiring her prosecutors to consider 'racial identity' during prosecutorial decision making". Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon stated: "It is unconstitutional and morally abhorrent to make different prosecutorial decisions based on a person's race."[^7] The Department closed the investigation on February 26–27, 2026. By then the office had amended the policy, replacing the "racial identity" instruction with a direction that prosecutors "be aware of and actively seek to eliminate bias, including race-based bias".[^8] Dhillon's closure letter said the Department "appreciate[s] that HCAO now has corrected a policy that clearly violated the Constitution". It added that "Closure of our investigation does not foreclose the remedies that private parties may seek against HCAO".[^8] Office spokesman Daniel Borgertpoepping called the investigation a "stunt".[^24] The record shows that the amendment followed the opening of the investigation. It does not establish the reasons for the amendment. ## Notes [^1]: Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, *Michael O. Freeman* (legislator record) — Senate District 40 service, 1982–1991; Majority Whip; office dates as compiled in the project's dossier. https://www.lrl.mn.gov/legdb/fulldetail?id=10197 [^2]: Minnesota Historical Society Library, *Finding aid 00531* — cited in the project's dossier for Freeman's offices, campaigns and prosecutions. https://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00531.xml [^3]: Wikipedia, *Michael O. Freeman* (rev. 1381599714, retrieved Oct. 27, 2026) — birth date, education, Senate and county-attorney career, campaigns for governor, police-conduct cases, 2019 leave, 2021 retirement announcement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O._Freeman [^4]: Minnesota Legislative Reference Library, *Gov. Orville Freeman* (governor biography) — DFL; election of Nov. 2, 1954, over C. Elmer Anderson by 68,234 votes. https://www.lrl.mn.gov/mngov/govbio?govid=10 [^5]: Hennepin County Attorney's Office, *Clark decision* (Mar. 30, 2016) — no charges against Officers Ringgenberg and Schwarze; forensic evidence cited. https://www.hennepinattorney.org/news/news/2016/March/cao-clark-decision-3-30-2016 [^6]: Hennepin County Attorney's Office, *Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants* (effective Apr. 28, 2025) — policy text. https://kstp.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Negotiation-Policy-for-Cases-Involving-Adult-Defendants.pdf [^7]: U.S. Department of Justice, *U.S. Department of Justice Announces Civil Rights Investigation into the Consideration of Race in Prosecutorial Decision making by Minnesota's Hennepin County* (May 5, 2025, release 25-469) — opening of the investigation; Dhillon statement. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-department-justice-announces-civil-rights-investigation-consideration-race-prosecutorial [^8]: Fox 9, *Feds drop investigation into race-based Hennepin County policy* (Feb. 27, 2026) — closure after amendment; amended language; closure-letter text. https://www.fox9.com/news/feds-drop-investigation-race-based-hennepin-county-policy-feb-27 [^9]: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, *United States Department of Justice Files Lawsuit Against Minnesota's 'Affirmative Action' Regime* (Jan. 14, 2026, release No. 26-21) — suit against the State; Attorney General Bondi's certification. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-department-justice-files-lawsuit-against-minnesotas-affirmative-action-regime [^10]: Miller Center, *Orville Freeman (1961): Secretary of Agriculture* — Orville Freeman's cabinet service under Kennedy. https://millercenter.org/president/kennedy/essays/freeman-1961-orville-secretary-of-agriculture [^11]: University of Minnesota Law School, *Asked & Answered: Mike Freeman '74: Hennepin County Attorney* (Jan. 31, 2020) — J.D. 1974. https://law.umn.edu/news/2020-01-31-asked-answered-mike-freeman-74-hennepin-county-attorney-more-two-decades [^12]: Wikipedia, *Orville Freeman* — first DFL governor, elected 1954. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orville_Freeman [^13]: Minnesota Department of Human Rights, *Minnesota history video text* — 1955 Fair Employment Practices Act signed by Gov. Freeman; race, color, creed. https://mn.gov/mdhr/news-community/videos/history-videos/mnhistory-videotext4.jsp [^14]: Wikipedia, *Amy Klobuchar* — Hennepin County Attorney Jan. 5, 1999 – Jan. 3, 2007; University of Chicago Law School J.D. 1985; U.S. Senate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Klobuchar [^15]: Minnesota Supreme Court, *State v. Martinez*, No. A05-696 (Jan. 11, 2007) — caption "Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney". https://caselaw.findlaw.com/mn-supreme