Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have come forward with an explanation for FBI Director Kash Patel’s decision to order agents to stop investigating the killing of Renee Good at the hands of an ICE agent in Minneapolis.
In a Monday X post, the Democratic senators cited a “credible whistleblower” who said, “FBI forensic experts were ordered to stand down from processing the scene where Renee Good was killed, because Kash Patel did not want Good referenced as a ‘victim’ in the warrant.”
The revelation comes just days after ranking members Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin called for an investigation into the FBI’s decision to shut down a civil rights investigation into Good’s killing.
“As you know, it is standard procedure for federal prosecutors and the FBI to conduct a use-of-force investigation when a law enforcement officer kills or injures someone, especially in cases of immense public scrutiny such as this one,” the pair wrote in a letter sent to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility on Feb. 25.
“In light of these press reports, credible whistleblower information received by the Committee, and the mass resignation of career prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, we request that DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility investigate the end of the civil rights probe into Ms. Good’s death, including who ordered the closure of the investigation and why,” the letter continued.
A follow-up post from the Senate Judiciary Democrats said that “Kash Patel wanted to falsely spin Renee Good as a threat to law enforcement,” attaching a screenshot of a paragraph containing a whistleblower’s account of the closure of the FBI investigation.
According to the whistleblower, “FBI Director Patel wanted the warrant not to include language referencing Good as the victim but instead to portray her as the subject of an investigation into the assault of a federal law enforcement officer.”
A report from the New York Times last month revealed that agents who were preparing to examine blood spatter and bullet holes in Good’s SUV received orders to stop from senior officials, including Patel himself, who were concerned that a civil rights investigation would contradict President Donald Trump’s claim that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who shot and killed her—a claim contradicted by available video evidence.
The Times report details alternative approaches suggested by the Department of Justice, including suggesting prosecutors ask a judge to sign a new warrant that would allow them to investigate whether Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Good, had been assaulted. They also urged prosecutors to investigate Good’s partner.
The pivot prompted an internal revolt that resulted in at least six federal prosecutors resigning from the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office, as well as one supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office who resigned after being pressured to discontinue the investigation into Ross.
Good, a 37-year old mother of three and U.S. citizen who lived in Minneapolis, was fatally shot by Ross on Jan. 7 amid the Trump administration’s continued immigration crackdown and subsequent counter-protests in the city.
Nobody has been charged with her killing. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed in January that the DOJ would not be opening a criminal investigation into Ross for his role in Good’s death.
Local officials have expressed concern that the lack of an investigation will only deepen public distrust, with Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara telling the Times, “This is potentially destroying all of the progress that we have made, working together between local and federal law enforcement officials in a very coordinated way, to actually go after the worst of the worst.”
Chris Madel, a Minnesota defense attorney who advised Ross following the shooting, also supported an investigation, telling the Times, “In the absence of an independent use-of-force investigation, you lead the public to believe that there must be something to hide.”
