A revolt has mounted within the Department of Justice over the investigation of the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, a former assistant attorney general said Tuesday.
The resignation of now six senior career officials from the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has signaled a major response after the DOJ was sidelined on what's been considered "one of the gravest excessive-force cases in decades," Harry Litman wrote in a Substack essay.
"Now up to six resignations in D Minnesota. Metastatic and spreading quickly. Clearly one of 2-3 biggest scandals in DOJ history," Litman wrote on Bluesky, just shortly after he published his initial analysis.
Litman called out the Trump administration for its response to the Good killing and the aftermath of the investigation. ICE has maintained the position that the fatal shooting by Ross was justified, which the Trump administration has also echoed.
"First, the highest government officials circled the wagons around Ross," Litman wrote. "Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance defended the agent’s actions and suggested that Good bore responsibility for her own death. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled the incident 'domestic terrorism,' a characterization that has been widely questioned. Trump himself made inaccurate claims that Good had 'run over' the ICE officer, which video evidence contradicts."
The DOJ announced it would send the case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, not the federal justice experts.
"At the same time, leadership of the Civil Rights Division, under Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, informed the Criminal Section that it would not be investigating the case at all—a spectacular departure from past practice. Multiple career prosecutors offered to go to the scene but were told not to," Litman wrote.
"It was like a fire chief watching smoke pour from a burning building and ordering the crew not to respond, even as firefighters volunteered to go in," he added.
The opposition to the civil rights investigation has been catastrophic, he explained.
"The resigning officials, then, were not merely objecting to a particular judgment call. In effect, they were saying that if the Criminal Section does not have jurisdiction over a case like this, its role has been reduced to near irrelevance," Litman wrote.
The move has been shocking, and the pushback on the independent federal investigation has driven the resignations.
"Excessive force by officers is not new," Litman explained. "What is novel for the United States is the use of federal power afterward to stifle investigation and shield wrongdoing. That turn—from lethal force to enforced impunity—is an abuse of authority and a hallmark of authoritarian governance."