Kash Patel has reportedly launched a probe of “the organizers and funders” of anti-ICE protests after a federal agent shot an unarmed mother in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
“The FBI is investigating paid protest campaigns throughout the country including organizers, protesters, and funding sources that drive illicit activities,” the FBI director reportedly told pro-Trump media outlet Just the News Thursday.
The website added, without supporting evidence, “the protests appear to be organized by a Chinese Communist Party-linked financial network in the United States.”
The author of that report, John Solomon, offered further details in an interview with MAGA pundit and former Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon on the Real America’s Voice show, The War Room.
“[Patel] said and confirmed this morning that the organizers and funders of the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis are under criminal investigation for impeding lawful law enforcement activities and endangering public safety,” Solomon claimed.
Solomon described it as “the most strong statement” from anyone in the MAGA administration thus far that “not only are the people that ICE is rounding up doing unlawful activities, but these left-wing anarchist protesters are also potentially going to face criminal sanctions soon.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the FBI for comment on this story.
Patel’s reported crusade against anti-ICE protest organizers follows after the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, 37, a U.S. citizen, by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Wednesday.
Footage of the incident, widely circulated on social media, shows an ICE official screaming at Good in the street, demanding she get out of the “f–king car” as he approaches her SUV.
As Good makes to pull away from the agent, another officer standing by the front of the car removes his gun and fires one shot through the windshield, then two more through the window on the driver’s side.
The car then rolls forward before crashing into another parked vehicle on the other side of the street.
In addition to investigating anti-ICE protesters, the FBI has also been tasked with exclusively investigating the shooting of Good. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, in a statement on Thursday, said that after initially being assigned to assist in the investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office informed the agency that the FBI would handle the case alone.
“The BCA would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,” BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said.
President Donald Trump responded to Good’s death by defending the ICE agent’s actions and blaming Good.
“The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense,” Trump, 79, wrote on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon.
“Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but is now recovering in the hospital,” the president went on. “We need to stand by and protect our Law Enforcement Officers from this Radical Left Movement of Violence and Hate!”
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Trisha McLaughlin previously told the Daily Beast the ICE agent who killed Good had been acting in self-defense.
Good, McLaughlin claimed, was a “violent rioter” who “weaponized her vehicle” against immigration officials in “an act of domestic terrorism.”
