Harry Litman - The Minnesota Case Gets Uglier

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The stunning resignations on Monday of four senior career officials from the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division confirm that DOJ has gone profoundly off the rails in its handling of what increasingly appears to be one of the gravest excessive-force cases in decades.

The resignations, an ultimate eloquent gesture, reportedly had multiple causes. The central one was the sidelining of the Criminal Section from the investigation of the January 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross.

In any normal, professionally run Department of Justice—Democratic or Republican—a shooting that looks this serious on its face would trigger a searching civil-rights investigation by the Criminal Section, the Department’s longstanding unit for prosecuting unlawful uses of force. That has been true whether the assailant was a state officer, as in Rodney King, or—more rarely—a federal one, as at Ruby Ridge. (I served in the Department during both and worked on the King case, and I’ll be writing about some of the lessons from that case in coming Substack pieces.)

ICE has steadfastly maintained that the shooting was justified because Ross reasonably believed that Good was attempting to run him over. But multiple bystander videos and visual analyses have seriously undermined that self-serving account. I put the point in that lawyerly, hedged way because, for present purposes, it is more than enough to establish beyond any cavil that this case demands the most thorough investigation the federal government can muster.

https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/the-minnesota-case-gets-uglier

[Joinfortmill]

1. This is a fascist administration making every effort to become a fascist regime.

And if the Republican Party doesn't wake up quickly, they will soon become the Fascist Party.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Top prosecutors in D.C., Minneapolis leave amid turmoil over shooting probe

Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office left after pressure to investigate the widow of a woman slain by an ICE officer.

Top prosecutors in D.C., Minneapolis leave amid turmoil over shooting probe
Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office left after pressure to investigate the widow of a woman slain by an ICE officer. www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

— Jersey Craig (@jerseycraig.bsky.social) 2026-01-13T20:59:41.970Z

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/13/justice-department-civil-rights-resignations/

Multiple senior prosecutors in Washington and Minnesota are leaving their jobs amid turmoil over the Trump administration’s handling of the shooting death of a Minneapolis woman.

The departures include at least five prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Minneapolis, including the office’s second-in-command, according to emails obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter.

Their resignations followed demands by Justice Department leaders to investigate the widow of Renée Good, the 37-year-old woman killed last week by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who shot into her car, according to two people familiar with the resignations who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for retaliation. Good’s wife was protesting ICE officers in the moments before the shooting. Prosecutors also were dismayed over the decision by federal officials to exclude state and local authorities from the investigation, one of the people said.

Five senior prosecutors in the criminal section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division also said they are leaving, according to four people familiar with the personnel moves who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters.

The departures strip both the Civil Rights Division’s criminal section and U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota of their most experienced prosecutors. The moves are widely seen as a major vote of no-confidence by career prosecutors at a moment when the department is under extreme scrutiny......

“This exodus is a huge blow signaling the disrespect and sidelining of the finest and most experienced civil rights prosecutors,” said Vanita Gupta, the head of the division during the Obama administration and the associate attorney general during the Biden administration. “It means cases won’t be brought, unique expertise will be lost and the top career attorneys who may be a backstop to some of the worst impulses of this administration will have left.”