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Around January 14, 2026, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the Justice Department had determined there was “no foundation for a criminal civil rights investigation” into the shooting death of Renee Good. Seven days earlier, ICE agent Jonathan Ross had fired three shots into Good’s vehicle. The shots killed the 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three.
In that span, no witness interviews had been conducted by Civil Rights Division investigators. Investigators conducted no scene examination under civil rights protocols.
This wasn’t prosecutorial discretion—the legitimate choice not to prosecute after reviewing evidence. This was a conclusion reached by skipping the preliminary inquiry that would generate evidence in the first place. Officials accomplished this through a series of deliberate procedural moves that reveal how federal officials foreclosed inquiry at both the federal and state level before either could develop facts that might lead to different conclusions.
What Happened in Seven Days
January 7: Ross fires three shots at close range.
January 14: Blanche announces “no foundation for investigation.”
The Good case compressed that entire timeline into a week. The preliminary inquiry—the phase where investigators interview witnesses, examine evidence, review policies, and assess whether the facts present potential federal violations—was omitted.
How the Inquiry Was Foreclosed
Senior officials made immediate public statements characterizing the incident as justified self-defense, establishing the narrative before most facts had been gathered. Federal authorities asserted exclusive jurisdiction and blocked state investigators from evidence. Career prosecutors in the Civil Rights Division who would normally conduct preliminary assessment were bypassed. Political appointees announced “no foundation” before those career prosecutors could object.
The most significant exclusion: the Civil Rights Division itself was cut out of the preliminary review process. Multiple sources report that career prosecutors who specialize in federal civil rights law were not given the opportunity to assess whether this case warranted inquiry.
Instead, the decision went straight to political appointees: Blanche and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The Resignations
Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned, reportedly due to disagreements about how DOJ was handling the probe. These included Joseph Thompson, the No. 2 official in the office who had been serving as acting U.S. Attorney.
According to sources familiar with his communications, Thompson supported investigating the shooting as an assault on a federal officer but objected to the FBI’s plan to investigate Good and her wife as potential co-conspirators. Thompson wasn’t opposed to inquiry. He was opposed to who was being investigated and how.
Beyond Minnesota, several supervisors in the Civil Rights Division in Washington also resigned or gave notice. These are career prosecutors within the division that exists to examine violations of constitutional protections. Their departures suggest the “no foundation” determination didn’t reflect professional consensus but rather a decision imposed from above despite professional disagreement.
The Jurisdictional Assertion
While DOJ was foreclosing federal inquiry, it was simultaneously blocking state inquiry through jurisdictional assertions that legal experts say are incorrect.
The legal argument appears to be that because the shooting involved a federal officer performing federal duties, it’s exclusively federal jurisdiction. But this interpretation conflicts with longstanding Supreme Court precedent. States have concurrent jurisdiction over crimes committed within their territory, even by federal officers. The Supremacy Clause provides immunity only if officers can demonstrate their actions were “necessary and proper” to carrying out federal duties—a determination that requires case-by-case assessment, not blanket exemption.
The FBI controlled the crime scene and evidence collection. Minnesota investigators couldn’t independently verify federal work or develop independent findings. They were locked out.
This created a situation where the federal government had complete control over the process, the evidence, and the narrative. No independent verification. No alternative perspective.
Standard Preliminary Inquiry Procedures
A standard preliminary inquiry in a potential constitutional violations case involves: interviews with the officer involved and witnesses; examination of physical evidence and video footage; collection of the officer’s prior complaints or discipline history; review of agency policies and training materials. This isn’t a full probe—it’s sufficient to allow professional judgment about whether the facts present potential federal violations.
Then comes legal analysis. Does the conduct potentially violate 18 U.S.C. § 242, which criminalizes willful deprivation of constitutional protections under color of law? That requires examining whether the officer acted willfully (deliberately, knowing the conduct was unlawful) and whether the force constituted deprivation of Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable seizure.
This analysis, combined with factual development, forms the foundation for deciding whether further work is warranted. Many preliminary reviews result in determinations that additional work isn’t warranted—but those determinations come after the preliminary review, not before it.
None of this happened in the Good case. Political appointees made the determination rapidly, without the intermediate step of professional legal and factual assessment by career prosecutors specialized in constitutional protections law.
The Precedent
This case establishes a template: Federal officers conduct operations. A shooting occurs. Political appointees make rapid statements characterizing it as justified. Federal authorities assert exclusive jurisdiction and exclude state work. The “no foundation” determination follows before state authorities can gather evidence or federal prosecutors specializing in constitutional protections can conduct preliminary assessment.
If this template is applied to future cases, it creates a systematic mechanism by which federal law enforcement shootings can be insulated from scrutiny by both federal authorities specializing in constitutional protections and state authorities. Not through legal immunity—through procedural foreclosure.
The Trump administration deployed approximately 3,000 ICE agents to Minnesota starting in early December 2025. These federal officers were operating extensively within Minnesota territory, conducting immigration enforcement operations. If federal authorities can assert exclusive jurisdiction over all actions by these officers and prevent state work, Minnesota loses the ability to enforce state criminal laws—including laws against assault, murder, and manslaughter—against federal officers operating within its territory.
Another ICE shooting occurred on January 14, the same day Blanche announced “no foundation” for examining the first one. Minnesota authorities announced they would independently examine the second incident after being excluded from the first. But they face the same barriers: federal control of evidence, jurisdictional assertions, lack of access.
As Northeastern law professor Deborah Ramirez noted, joint work serves important purposes: it brings together FBI forensic capabilities with state authorities’ local expertise; it provides efficiency by avoiding duplication; it creates legitimacy through independent verification. The absence of joint work means the loss of these benefits and the loss of accountability itself.
The Logical Contradiction
You cannot determine there is “no foundation for investigation” without conducting the preliminary inquiry that would generate the groundwork for such a determination.
This isn’t prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutors regularly decline to prosecute after reviewing evidence—that’s legitimate exercise of prosecutorial power. But this is different: declining to investigate before the facts have been developed that would inform whether inquiry is appropriate.
In normal cases, prosecutors examine developed evidence and make judgments about sufficiency of proof, strength of legal arguments, public interest in prosecution. They might decline to prosecute if evidence is insufficient or the legal theory is weak. But that discretion operates within a framework where evidence has been developed and examined.
Blanche made his determination before the facts that would inform whether there’s potential for work to develop a case had been gathered. That’s a determination to foreclose inquiry before it can generate facts that might support further work.
The mechanisms used to reach this determination operated across multiple levels: legal (through Supremacy Clause and immunity arguments that experts say are incorrect); institutional (through bypassing the Civil Rights Division and career prosecutor assessment); procedural (through foreclosing preliminary inquiry); and political (through rapid statements characterizing the incident before facts were developed).
What this reveals about the current DOJ is an institution where prosecutorial discretion has been converted into a tool for preemptively preventing inquiry when such work might lead to conclusions contrary to administration policy.
Ongoing Investigations
Minnesota state authorities have committed to independent investigations. They’re examining whether Minnesota state criminal laws were violated—assault, murder, manslaughter, duty to provide assistance to an injured person.
Good’s family hired Romanucci & Blandin, the Chicago law firm that represented Floyd’s family and secured a $27 million settlement with Minneapolis. The firm announced it will conduct an independent probe and release findings on a rolling schedule.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed. Minnesota and the Twin Cities sued the Trump administration to challenge the ICE enforcement surge and the exclusion of state authorities from the case. Federal courts are considering whether to grant injunctions or require cooperation with state authorities.
These processes will develop evidence and findings that may contradict the federal “no foundation” determination made without proper review. If state prosecutors develop sufficient evidence to charge Ross despite federal opposition, the case would likely move to federal court—where federal officers can remove state criminal cases—and a federal judge would determine whether Supremacy Clause immunity applies.
That determination would require judicial examination of the facts. The examination that was bypassed by the “no foundation” determination.
Institutional Consequences
The resignations of career prosecutors suggest many view this as politicized suppression of normal processes.
The institutional dimension affects not only this case but the future operation of the Civil Rights Division and DOJ’s capacity to examine law enforcement shootings. If inquiries into constitutional violations can be preemptively foreclosed through “no foundation” determinations made at the political appointee level without career prosecutor input, the institutional capacity for such work is fundamentally altered.
When shootings are caught on video and widely shared, public response depends heavily on whether people see government officials being held accountable. If citizens perceive that law enforcement can shoot people without scrutiny or accountability, it erodes trust in law enforcement and the legal system.
The Good case is already demonstrating this dynamic. Widespread protests in Minneapolis. Emergency deployment of military legal advisers to Minnesota. Calls for congressional examination.
The precedent of “no foundation” determination without proper inquiry could accelerate this erosion by creating a formal mechanism to insulate shootings from scrutiny at both federal and state level. The long-term consequences for federal law enforcement accountability, for the separation of powers between federal and state governments, and for public confidence in the rule of law are substantial.
The ongoing work will likely continue to develop facts and analysis that either validate or undermine Blanche’s determination. If these efforts reveal facts suggesting violations occurred, they will demonstrate that the “no foundation” determination was premature and perhaps incorrect. They will also demonstrate that the institutional processes that were bypassed—the Civil Rights Division’s preliminary assessment, the career prosecutor review, the state work—have value precisely because they develop facts and perspectives that political appointees making rapid determinations cannot access.
The Good case is ultimately about how government institutions make decisions, who participates in those decisions, and how those institutional processes are protected or bypassed. Understanding what happened requires examining the specific mechanisms through which that conclusion was reached, who was excluded from decision-making, and what procedures were circumvented.
The Justice Department determined there was no foundation for inquiry by ensuring no inquiry could occur that might find such a foundation.
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