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The Department of Justice (DOJ) will not pursue a criminal civil rights investigation into the killing of Renee Good by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis, a top department official said Tuesday.
The move marks a departure from past administrations, which have typically moved quickly to open Justice Department civil rights reviews of fatal encounters involving law enforcement, even when criminal charges were considered unlikely.
Lawyers with the Civil Rights Division were told last week that they would not be part of the investigation at this time, two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press.
In line with those reports, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Digital on Tuesday, “There is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.”
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The Department of Justice will not pursue a criminal civil rights investigation into Renee Good’s fatal shooting. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
CNN first reported Blanche’s statement, which did not provide details on how the DOJ reached its conclusion that no investigation was warranted.
Federal officials have said that when Good pulled forward toward the ICE officer, he acted in self-defense and described the driver’s actions as “an act of domestic terrorism.”
Still, the DOJ’s decision to keep the Civil Rights Division out of the investigation before it is complete has raised concerns about the Trump administration’s determination to conduct a full review of the events leading to the shooting.
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The DOJ is breaking from a longstanding precedent of swift civil rights investigations. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Minnesota officials have claimed federal authorities blocked state investigators from accessing evidence in the case and asserted that the state lacks jurisdiction to independently investigate the killing, according to the AP.
“As with any officer-involved shooting, each law enforcement agency has an internal investigation protocol, including DHS,” a DOJ official told Fox News Digital. “As such, ICE OPR has its own investigation underway. This runs parallel to any FBI investigation.”
The decision has been followed by a wave of departures among federal prosecutors involved in the case. Roughly half a dozen prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office have resigned in recent days, along with several supervisors in the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in Washington, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Democratic Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Among those who resigned was First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson, who had been overseeing major fraud prosecutions in Minnesota, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The situation drew sharp criticism from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.
“These prosecutors are heroes, and the people pushing to prosecute Renee’s widow are monsters,” Frey wrote Tuesday in a post on X. “In their pursuit of cruelty, the administration also just set back the work of fighting fraud by pushing out the prosecutors who were working on those cases.”
The resignations are part of a broader exodus of career Justice Department attorneys amid concerns about political pressure and shifting enforcement priorities under the Trump administration.
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The Justice Department has denied that the resignations were connected to the Minnesota case, saying the prosecutors had requested to participate in an early retirement program well before the events surrounding the shooting.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.