The U.S. Department of Justice fired several of Minnesota’s top federal prosecutors on Wednesday, one day after they submitted their resignations over disputes related to the ICE-shooting probe in Minneapolis.
Initial reports said six federal prosecutors resigned over the DOJ’s push to investigate some of the groups behind the resistance efforts against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Minneapolis.
The DOJ also wanted a probe into Renee Good’s wife, Becca Good, according to various reports.
The U.S. attorneys included Joseph H. Thompson, the lead federal prosecutor working on Minnesota’s widening welfare fraud scandal. Thompson, who had charged many of the people involved in social services fraud in the state, served as the first assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Minnesota.
Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke to FOX News’ Hannity on Wednesday, saying she fired them after they resigned but requested three months of vacation on the taxpayers’ dime.
“We had six prosecutors who suddenly decided they didn’t want to support the men and women of ICE,” Bondi said live on the air. “One of them was busy doing a photo shoot with The New York Times while ICE was out there risking their lives.”
The internal disputes about the shooting probe first surfaced in the New York Times and quickly spread in other outlets — spun as if the prosecutors abruptly quit in protest of the Trump administration’s handling of the investigation involving Renee Good and her wife.
The prosecutors requested to use the rest of their paid leave prior to their firings on Wednesday, according to sources who spoke to Fox News Digital.
“They said ‘We want to resign, but we want to use our annual leave up until April,’ meaning they wanted the taxpayers to pay for them to go on vacation because they decided they didn’t want to support law enforcement,” Bondi said. “So, I fired them all.”
Fox News Digital reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota in an effort to reach Thompson for comment. Prior to the shooting, he had discussed the possibility of resigning, the sources said.
The shooting of 37-year-old anti-ICE activist Renee Good on Jan. 7 has prompted growing civil unrest and organized anti-ICE resistance in Minnesota — as well as a war of words between Trump officials and leaders in Minnesota.
According to reports, Thompson had expressed he was on board with investigating the ICE shooting as an assault on or obstruction of a law enforcement officer during a call with DOJ and FBI officials last week, a source familiar with the call told Fox News Digital.
However, Thompson reportedly had reservations about the DOJ’s plan to also investigate Good’s widow and other possible co-conspirators, the source said.
Recent investigations have found several radical groups actively working to resist ICE are tied to dark money networks and the Left’s premier foundations. The organizations are supported in part by left-wing financiers including George Soros and Neville Roy Singham, who has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The Sunrise Movement, Unidos MN, Defend the 612 and Copal MN are among the organized activist groups at the center of the civil unrest and anti-ICE resistance in Minneapolis.
Together, these groups have received millions of dollars from several progressive nonprofits, including Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, the Tides Foundation and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, according to a recent report by the Washington Free Beacon.
Becca Good reportedly followed an Instagram page, “MN Ice Watch,” that describes itself as an “autonomous collective documenting & resisting against ICE, police, & all colonial militarized regimes.”
Through eyewitness reports and video footage, the FBI had evidence that Good and her spouse were following and impeding ICE officers on the day of the shooting, the source said.
Good had blocked a neighborhood road and honked her horn for several minutes when agents approached the vehicle and ordered her to get out of her SUV. Good’s wife, Becca Good, was outside of the car recording and told Good to “drive, baby drive” when she accelerated.
In a statement to Minnesota Public Radio, Good’s spouse said that on Jan. 7, the day of the shooting, she and Renee “stopped to support [their] neighbors.”
Another one of the fired prosecutors, Melinda Williams, who was also involved in the fraud work, was on the call as well, the source told Fox News Digital.
The FBI took over the investigation and has excluded the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from the probe, drawing the ire of state officials. The DOJ has defended the move and said it is justified because the incident involved a federal officer.
“We support Secretary Noem,” Bondi told Hannity. “We support our men and women of Homeland Security and ICE who are out there taking predators off the street every day around the country.”
Bondi told Hannity that they learned several of the prosecutors were already interviewing at liberal law firms.
Thompson was a career prosecutor and the top lieutenant of Daniel N. Rosen, an appointee of President Donald Trump. Thompson served as the acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota last year before Rosen’s confirmation, the Minnesota Reformer reported.
“Our US Attorney there Rosen, he was just confirmed three months ago,” Bondi said. “So, he has his hands full and that’s what we’re facing around the country, the deep state in many of these offices.”
Bondi said that one of the prosecutors who resigned had defended Black Lives Matter in 2022 when they burned down a pawn shop and someone was murdered.
“They want to be part of the resistance,” Bondi said. “Bring it on. They’re not going to be working for Donald Trump and the Department of Justice any longer. But that’s what we’re up against, not only in Minnesota, but across this country.”
