DOJ prosecutors resign in protest over handling of ICE shooting investigation

Amna Nawaz:

Across the Justice Department today in both Washington, D.C., and Minnesota, a wave of resignations from top prosecutors. At least four senior leaders of the division that investigates police killings have resigned in protest over the handling of that fatal shooting last week of a woman in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.

And, in Minnesota, six other federal prosecutors have left their posts.

Joining us with more details is Carol Leonnig. She's the senior investigative reporter for MS NOW and author of "Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department."

Carol, welcome back. It's good to see you.

Carol Leonnig, MS NOW:

It's great to be with you.

Amna Nawaz:

So let's start with the news that you first broke, those resignations from a section of the Civil Rights Division, one that we mentioned would normally investigate law enforcement killings like the officer that killed Renee Good.

Why did those prosecutors resign?

Carol Leonnig:

So these are the senior leaders of this unit that investigates these kinds of shootings and other abuses of civil rights, potential abuses of civil rights of Americans for the Justice Department.

To have an entire leadership team walk out the door roughly at the same time is unprecedented. At first, we heard that the reason that they resigned was in protest of the handling of the department's decision basically not to investigate this ICE shooting.

It's a little more complicated than that. These people had indicated that they were interested in retiring early and resigning several days before the shooting, actually a day before the shooting. But then they decided to cut short their time at the Justice Department in the wake of the department's leadership's decision for not investigating this case.

It's so rare for this unit not to investigate fatal shootings involving federal officers, and that is what's taken away the breath of a lot of people in the Department of Justice. And now this unit, these leaders, we are told by multiple sources, Amna, are trying to send up an alarm bell and ring that bell very loudly to the American people, making a statement that this is not copacetic, this is not kosher.

Amna Nawaz:

So what about the resignations that we saw in Minnesota?

The federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office there, reportedly, according to The New York Times, also resigning in protest of the DOJ's reluctance to investigate the ICE officer here, but also reportedly because they say they were being pushed to investigate Renee Good herself. What do we know about that?

Carol Leonnig:

We know very little other than, at MS NOW, we have confirmed that good reporting that indeed those people have resigned, six federal prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office based in Minneapolis, and that their reasoning for resigning is multilayered, one, disappointment with main Justice and how they're handling this matter.

You know, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Harmeet Dhillon, has told her staff as of Friday last week that they were not going to investigate, but also concerns about investigating Good herself.

Remember, just to set the table here, Amna, the president of the United States and the vice president, J.D. Vance, both within 36 hours of Good's death declared that the ICE officer was in the right, that the shooting was justified, without any evidence really being gathered by anyone in federal authorities, by the Justice Department.

It happened after the FBI declared that they would not allow local Minnesota authorities access to evidence in the case and that they would handle this investigation themselves. But what we heard was that the FBI was largely investigating Good and not the ICE officer.

Amna Nawaz:

Carol, for context here, because I know you have been leading the way on the reporting on this, when you look at the Justice Department and the number of departures we have seen over the last year, experienced prosecutors in a number of cases, can we quantify that and what's been the impact on the department itself?

Carol Leonnig:

Well, I will give you a couple examples.

The reason that I thought that reporting this was urgent late last night at 10:00 p.m. was because it was an entire leadership team walking out the door. That's a brain drain from which the Justice Department will not be able to recover for a generation.

You can't replace people with that expertise quickly, but that's writ large happening all over the Justice Department and has been since January 21, 2025, when Trump was inaugurated and ordered the removal of a whole set of top counterterrorism officials at the Justice Department, people who were the senior leaders that represented the U.S. government and the Department of Justice in foreign halls all over the world.

The removal of all of the prosecutors who had handled the January 6 investigation one after the other, the removal about a month later in February of all of the senior leadership of the FBI, the executive levels, people who protect us and intervene when there are terror plots abroad that are targeting the United States.

The American people need to understand, if they haven't already gotten this message, that the sources that are talking to me and my competitors and my colleagues who cover this material, they are sending a loud signal that America needs to pay attention that we are less safe because this expertise has been either forced out, fired, or has resigned in protest, as these most recent resignation signal.

Amna Nawaz:

That is Carol Leonnig, senior investigative reporter for MS NOW, joining us tonight.

Carol, always great to have you. Thank you so much.

Carol Leonnig:

Thank you.