The timeline of events isn’t exactly subtle. Two weeks ago, after Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz announced that he was ending his bid for a third term, Donald Trump and his White House team said the end of the Democratic governor’s campaign wasn’t enough, and they wanted Walz to face a Justice Department investigation.
Less than a week later, The Wall Street Journal reported that the president had begun complaining privately about Attorney General Pam Bondi, “describing her as weak and an ineffective enforcer of his agenda,” at least in part because she hasn’t pursued his perceived political enemies as quickly as he’d prefer. The following day, the Journal published a follow-up report, adding that Trump also criticized some of his own U.S. attorneys at a White House event, “complaining they weren’t moving fast enough to prosecute his favored targets.”
Connecting the dots was rather straightforward: Team Trump wanted the Justice Department to go after Walz, and the president has been whining about the pace at which prosecutors were pursuing his domestic foes.
Take a wild guess what happened a few days after the Journal’s report reached the public. MS NOW reported:
The Justice Department has opened an investigation into Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, according to two people familiar with the matter, a significant escalation of President Donald Trump’s campaign of retribution against his critics and a move that is almost certain to further inflame tensions with the state.
The investigation focuses on allegations of obstructing federal immigration enforcement amid protests throughout Minneapolis following the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer last week.
The governor and mayor join a growing list of Democrats facing Trump administration investigations, which now includes former President Joe Biden, former President Bill Clinton, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff of California, Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, Sen. Ellisa Slotkin of Michigan, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, Rep. Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Rep. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania.
By all accounts, the criminal inquiry in Minnesota is quite thin. As a Washington Post report summarized, Walz and Frey “have loudly disparaged ICE’s presence in the state and the way Trump and his administration have defended the officer and sidelined state officials in an investigation into the shooting. The subpoenas the Justice Department is preparing to send suggest the agency is looking at whether Walz’s and Frey’s public statements about the administration’s actions amount to illegal interference with law enforcement.”
In other words, the Justice Department has opened a criminal case against a governor and a mayor for criticizing alleged Trump administration abuses in ways the Trump administration doesn’t like.
Time will tell what, if anything, comes of prosecutors’ scrutiny of Walz and Frey, but in the meantime, the one person in Minnesota who need not worry about a Justice Department investigation is the ICE agent who shot and killed Good.
“There are over 1,000 shootings every year where law enforcement are put in danger by individuals, and they have to protect themselves, and they have a lawful right to do so,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said on “Fox News Sunday.” “The Department of Justice doesn’t just stand up and investigate because some congressmen thinks we should, because some governor thinks that we should.”
Blanche, a former Trump defense attorney, added, “We investigate when it’s appropriate to investigate. And that is not the case here. It was not the case when it happened and is not the case today.”
In other words, Trump’s Justice Department won’t investigate an ICE agent who shot and killed an unarmed woman, but it will investigate a governor and mayor who condemned an ICE agent who shot and killed an unarmed woman — as well as the victim’s family.
The evidence suggesting the DOJ is an institution in crisis is increasingly difficult to avoid.
