Within hours of Renee Good being fatally shot by an ICE agent on a Minneapolis street last month, federal prosecutors in Minnesota began moving toward what they expected would be a routine civil rights investigation into the use of force.
A senior prosecutor obtained a warrant to search Good’s SUV for evidence, and the FBI prepared to execute it. Then an order came down to stop.
Senior Trump administration officials—including FBI Director Kash Patel—intervened and instructed agents to stand down, halting the probe just as it was set to begin, according to a new report from The New York Times.
The move came amid internal concern in Washington that a civil rights investigation would clash with President Donald Trump’s public narrative blaming Good for the shooting.
Agents were reportedly told to abandon the standard investigative approach and pursue alternate legal theories—a shift that several career prosecutors blasted as legally dubious and politically driven.
One such approach was to seek new warrants framed around whether Good had assaulted the ICE agent or, in another controversial twist, to direct attention toward Good’s partner—a pivot that many in the office saw as inappropriate and unrelated to the shooting itself, according to several anonymous sources who spoke to The New York Times.
That shift ignited an internal revolt, with at least six federal prosecutors resigning from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s office rather than comply with what they viewed as politicized interference in a routine inquiry.
The departures have expanded in the weeks since, with additional attorneys leaving the office amid ongoing tension, according to the Associated Press.
The mass exodus has left the office scrambling to keep up with a surge of cases tied to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement push in Minnesota, including other use-of-force incidents and civil suits challenging detentions and enforcement actions.
Local officials warned that shutting down an independent review risked deepening public distrust.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara told The New York Times that without a neutral investigation, fatal encounters involving federal agents would inevitably raise suspicions.
“In the absence of an independent use-of-force investigation, you lead the public to believe that there must be something to hide,” O’Hara said
Even the ICE agent’s own legal counsel supported a civil rights review.
The Times reported that Chris Madel, a Minnesota defense attorney who advised the agent after the shooting, said such investigations are a standard mechanism for resolving disputed uses of force and protecting all parties involved.
The episode has drawn renewed scrutiny to Washington’s role in shaping sensitive law-enforcement decisions, particularly where investigations risk contradicting the president’s public statements.
The FBI declined to comment.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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