FBI agent who initially investigated fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis resigns
FBI agent who initially investigated fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis resigns
The FBI agent who initially began working with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to investigate the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good has resigned from the bureau, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Soon after the agent opened the civil rights investigation, she was ordered to reclassify it as an investigation into an assault on the officer. The FBI blocked the BCA from participating in the investigation.
The New York Times first reported the resignation.
The agent’s resignation comes as the agency has undergone another purge of seasoned FBI agents across several states, multiple sources familiar with the departures told CNN. Some of the people who are being pushed out were confronted after the bureau conducted a review of the FBI’s internal messaging system and discovered instances when they made negative comments about President Donald Trump, according to the people familiar.
Some of those comments go as far back as a decade, the sources said.
The removals are part of an ongoing effort led by Director Kash Patel to oust individuals involved in past investigations, including those related to Trump, and include top FBI officials in New Orleans, Miami and beyond.
The new slate of expulsions comes months after Patel was sued by three former senior FBI officials — including the former acting FBI director who served at the beginning of Trump’s second administration — who allege Patel was instructed to fire agents who worked on past Trump investigation or else be fired himself.
During his confirmation hearing last January, Patel told members of Congress that no one in the FBI “will be terminated for case assignments” and said he “will not … go backwards.”
“There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken,” Patel said.
This summer, the FBI Agents Association, a non-profit that provides various resources to current and former agents, warned lawmakers in a letter that Patel was “making personnel decisions without providing the due process protections promised to the recently terminated law enforcement officers under federal law.”
“None of the affected Agents were previously accused of misconduct or given notice and an opportunity to defend themselves,” the letter stated, “even though well-established FBI policy … required that these Agents be provided with both.”
By CNN