Prosecutors Flee DOJ After Being Told To Investigate The Murdered Woman, Not The Murderer

Failures

from the what-a-fucked-up-country dept

Last week, we wrote about how ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old poet and mother, on a Minneapolis street in broad daylight. We wrote about how the Trump administration immediately began lying about it despite multiple video angles showing exactly what happened. We wrote about how the media called documented murder a “dispute.”

This week, we’re writing about how career Justice Department prosecutors—people who’ve spent their careers putting away fraudsters, drug dealers, and actual criminals—looked at how the administration is handling this case and said: we want no part of this.

Because apparently the DOJ’s response to an ICE agent murdering an unarmed American citizen wasn’t to investigate the agent who pulled the trigger. It was to investigate the victim and her widow.

A federal agent shot an unarmed woman multiple times in the head at close range. Video evidence directly contradicts every administration claim about what happened. And the Justice Department’s priority is figuring out what activist groups the dead woman might have been associated with?

Really?

According to reporting from the New York Times, at least six federal prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office resigned on Tuesday over this approach:

Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit on Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent on Wednesday.

Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.

Read that again. Senior DOJ officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the widow. The woman whose wife was just murdered by a federal agent. That’s what prompted career prosecutors to walk out the door.

And Thompson wasn’t alone. The Times reports that Harry Jacobs (Thompson’s deputy on the fraud cases), Melinda Williams (who ran the criminal division and successfully prosecuted sex traffickers and fentanyl dealers), and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez (chief of violent and major crimes) all quit as well.

The Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office wasn’t the only place seeing an exodus.

According to MS Now, at least six leaders of the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division—the unit that’s supposed to investigate police killings—also resigned in protest:

Top leaders of the criminal section of the Civil Rights Division have left their jobs to register their frustration with the department after the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon decided not to investigate the ICE officer’s fatal shooting of Renee Good last week. The criminal section of the division would normally investigate any fatal shooting by a law enforcement officer and specializes in probing potential or alleged abuse or improper use of force by law enforcement. 

The departures – including that of the chief of the section, as well as the principal deputy chief, deputy chief and acting deputy chief – represent the most significant mass resignation at the Justice Department since February.

So we potentially have twelve or more DOJ officials walking out the door because of how this administration is handling a single case. Career prosecutors who spent years working for the DOJ and at least a year under this administration. People who had no apparent problem with everything else this DOJ has been doing. But investigating a murder victim while protecting her killer was apparently the line they couldn’t cross.

Let me say it plainly: when career prosecutors who’ve stuck around through a year of this administration’s chaos decide this is the moment to quit, it tells you something important about just how far outside normal law enforcement practice this has gone.

Also, remember why ICE supposedly flooded Minneapolis in the first place? Daycare fraud. A viral video from a small-time MAGA grifter claiming day cares were running scams, which the administration used to justify what it called “the largest immigration enforcement operation in history.”

And who was the lead prosecutor on those fraud cases? Joe Thompson. The same guy who just quit because the DOJ would rather investigate a murder victim’s activist connections than the agent who killed her.

As Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara put it to the NY Times:

“When you lose the leader responsible for making the fraud cases, it tells you this isn’t really about prosecuting fraud,”

No shit.

If you want evidence of just how upside-down the Justice Department’s priorities have become, look no further than what they’re actually investigating. A separate Times report from Sunday laid out how the FBI’s inquiry into the shooting is focused not on the agent’s actions, but on Good’s “possible connections to activist groups“:

The decision by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department to scrutinize Ms. Good’s activities and her potential connections to local activists is in line with the White House’s strategy of deflecting blame for the shooting away from federal law enforcement and toward opponents they have described as domestic terrorists, often without providing evidence.

Let’s summarize again: an ICE agent murders a woman in broad daylight. The division specifically designed to investigate when cops kill people has decided not to investigate the murderer. Instead, the DOJ is being told to investigate the dead woman and her widow’s social media connections.

And long term DOJ officials are rushing out the door, wanting absolutely nothing to do with any of this nonsense.

Meanwhile, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon was busy on social media retweeting posts warning people not to “ram ICE officers” because they’ll use deadly force—you know, completely prejudging the case she’s supposed to be overseeing. As former DOJ domestic terrorism counsel Thomas Brzozowski put it to the NY Times:

“It’s not appropriate for officials to characterize this incident as domestic terrorism before the investigation is complete,” said Thomas E. Brzozowski, the former counsel for domestic terrorism in the Justice Department’s national security division. “There used to be a process, deliberate and considered, to figure out if behavior could be legitimately described as domestic terrorism.”

“And when it’s not followed,” Mr. Brzozowski said, “then the term becomes little more than a political cudgel to bash one’s enemies.”

“There used to be a process.” Past tense. That’s where we are now.

The administration’s approach makes sense only if you understand that the goal was never justice—it was narrative control. The White House needs Good to be a terrorist, not a victim, because acknowledging that an ICE agent murdered an unarmed American citizen for no reason undermines everything they’ve been saying about their immigration crackdown. So they investigate the victim. They investigate the widow. They investigate the “activist groups.” Anything but investigate the guy who actually pulled the trigger.

Former Trump attorney and current Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s statement was revealing: “there is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation into the ICE agent.”

No basis. A federal agent shot an unarmed woman multiple times in the head. Video shows her trying to drive away, not toward officers. And there’s “no basis” for investigation. There’s a reason why every time a Trump legal move is flailing around, Blanche seems to show up and wave his arms theatrically yelling “nothing to see here folks.”

What would constitute a basis, exactly? Does the agent need to announce “I am now violating this person’s civil rights” before pulling the trigger?

Minnesota officials aren’t buying it. Governor Tim Walz called Thompson “a principled public servant” and added that his resignation is “the latest sign Trump is pushing nonpartisan career professionals out of the justice department, replacing them with his sycophants.” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the resigned prosecutors “heroes” and the people pushing to prosecute Good’s widow “monsters.”

Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension—the state agency that normally investigates police shootings and which the DOJ has deliberately excluded from this investigation—put it simply:

“We’re losing a true public servant,” said Mr. Evans. “We really need professional prosecutors.”

The absence of a credible and comprehensive investigation into Ms. Good’s killing stands to “undermine trust in our public safety agencies,” Mr. Evans added.

We’re well past that point. When the Justice Department investigates murder victims while shielding their killers, “trust” has already been destroyed.

The mass resignations tell us something crucial: there are still at least a few people inside the system who know the difference between law enforcement and state-sanctioned murder. Though, it raises the question of whether there’s anyone left who knows that distinction.

Thompson and his colleagues apparently decided they’d rather walk away from careers they spent decades building than participate in the investigation of a grieving widow while her wife’s killer walks free.

But their departures also mean the fraud cases—the ones the administration claimed justified this whole Minneapolis operation—are now in serious jeopardy. The prosecutor who knew every defendant, every transaction, who’d built those cases from the ground up over years, just walked out the door. If the administration actually cared about prosecuting fraud in Minnesota, they’d be begging Thompson to stay. Instead, they drove him out because protecting an ICE agent from accountability matters more to them than the stated reason they sent ICE to Minneapolis in the first place.

Renee Nicole Good was murdered by her own government. And the Justice Department’s response was to investigate her.

That’s the country we live in now.

Filed Under: civil rights division, doj, harmeet dhillon, investigations, joe thompson, jonathan ross, minneapolis, prosecutors, renee nicole good