The Department of Justice has rushed to shield federal agents from accountability and launched needless criminal investigations into Minnesota officials and residents.
the same day that federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti on a Minneapolis street, the Justice Department sent a letter to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. The letter did not have anything to say about the violence caused by the Department of Homeland Security’s presence in the state. Nor did it offer Minnesota any assistance in the investigation of Pretti’s death or that of Renee Good’s just more than two weeks earlier. Instead, Attorney General Pam Bondi complained that Walz had “refused to support” DHS, insisted that the state cooperate more fully with ICE, and demanded that the governor hand over its voter rolls and records on Medicaid and food-stamp recipients. Walz had “better support President Trump,” Bondi declared on Fox News.
This abusive behavior by DHS has stood out in the chaos of Operation Metro Surge. But the Justice Department has done its part, too. It has shielded federal agents from accountability, launched needless criminal investigations into Minnesota officials and residents, and pumped out propaganda to aid the far-right press in justifying ICE’s tactics. The president has always treated DOJ like his own personal law firm. Now the department is acting like DHS’s law firm as well.
DOJ first undertook the role of ICE defender in Minneapolis in the days after Good’s death, on January 7. Video captured by the phones of both bystanders and the ICE agent Jonathan Ross showed Ross firing into Good’s car repeatedly, killing her and sending her car barreling down the icy street. In prior administrations, a death at the hands of a federal officer would have been cause for the Justice Department to begin a probe into potential wrongdoing by law enforcement. But this time, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced, “There is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.” Though federal and local investigators typically collaborate in the aftermath of shootings by law enforcement, the FBI blocked state and local governments from accessing evidence. When a journalist asked Trump about this development, he explained that Minnesota officials should not be allowed to look at evidence, because they are “crooked.”
After Blanche accused Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of “encouraging violence against law enforcement,” DOJ sent out subpoenas to Walz, Frey, the mayor of St. Paul, the Minnesota attorney general, and the chief local prosecutor in Minneapolis as part of an ill-defined criminal investigation that seems designed chiefly to intimidate.
