More prosecutors resign as DOJ orders investigation of Renee Good's widow

A half dozen federal prosecutors resigned over a Department of Justice push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota who had been leading the sprawling fraud probe that prompted the recent immigration crackdown quit their posts Tuesday over DOJ's focus on investigating the wife of 37-year-old Renee Good rather than the ICE agent who shot and killed her, reported the New York Times.

"The stated reason for ICE agents being in Minnesota is because of the ongoing fraud claims around daycare and other services," noted British journalist James Ball, political editor for The New World. "The two prosecutors leading those investigations have now resigned in the wake of Renee Good’s shooting. Even the internal supposed logic of this deployment is falling apart."

Joseph H. Thompson, the second-ranking official at the U.S. attorney’s office who was overseeing the fraud probe that involved a number of Somali-run social service providers, was among the prosecutors who resigned in protest.

"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," the Times reported. "The other senior career prosecutors who resigned include Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Calhoun-Lopez was the chief of the violent and major crimes unit."

At least four other senior officials reportedly resigned from the Justice Department in protest after Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, decided not to investigate the ICE officer's killing of Good, who had been behind the wheel of a Honda SUV during an encounter with immigration agents last week in Minneapolis.

"Instead, the Justice Department launched an investigation to examine ties between Ms. Good and her wife, Becca, and several groups that have been monitoring and protesting the conduct of immigration agents in recent weeks," the Times reported. "Shortly after Wednesday’s fatal shooting, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, referred to Ms. Good as a 'domestic terrorist.'"

Thompson strongly objected to the DOJ's decision not to open a civil rights investigation into the shooting and was outraged by the demand to investigate Becca Good, who said in a statement after her wife's killing that they had “stopped to support our neighbors” when they got into a tense confrontation with ICE agents.

The career prosecutor initially tried to investigate the shooting in partnership with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a state agency that reviews police shootings, but senior DOJ officials overruled his decision.