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DOJ RESIGNATIONS OVER THE RENEE GOOD SHOOTING CONFIRM OUR WORST FEARS
 
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Harry Litman
January 13, 2026
The New Republic
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_ Justice officials are obviously trying to insulate Jonathan Ross
from accountability. And four senior career people couldn’t take it
anymore. _

Protesters hold photos of Renee Nicole Good in downtown Los Angeles
on January 8., Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

 

The stunning resignations
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on Monday of four senior career officials from the Criminal Section of
the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division confirm that DOJ has
gone profoundly off the rails in its handling of what increasingly
appears to be one of the gravest federal excessive-force cases in
decades.

 
The resignations reportedly had multiple causes, but the central one
was the sidelining of the Criminal Section from the investigation of
the January 7 fatal shooting
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of Renee Nicole Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent
Jonathan Ross.

In any normal, professionally run Department of Justice—Democratic
or Republican—a shooting that looks this serious on its face would
trigger a searching civil rights investigation by the Criminal
Section, the Department’s long-standing unit for prosecuting
unlawful uses of force. That has been true whether the assailant was a
state officer, as in the Rodney King case, or—more rarely—a
federal one, as at Ruby Ridge. (I served in the department during both
and worked on the King case.)

ICE has steadfastly maintained that the shooting was justified because
Ross reasonably believed that Good was attempting to run him over. But
multiple bystander videos
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and visual analyses have seriously undermined that self-serving
account. I put the point in that lawyerly, hedged way because, for
present purposes, it is more than enough to establish beyond any cavil
that this case demands the most thorough investigation the federal
government can muster.

That is the very opposite of what happened here.

First, the highest government officials circled the wagons around
Ross. Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance defended the agent’s
actions and suggested that Good bore responsibility for her own death.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled the incident
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“domestic terrorism,” a characterization that has been widely
questioned. Trump himself made inaccurate claims that Good had “run
over” the ICE officer, which video evidence contradicts.

At the same time, leadership of the Civil Rights Division, under
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, informed the Criminal
Section that it would not be investigating the case at all—a
spectacular departure from past practice. Multiple career prosecutors
offered to go to the scene but were told not to.

It was like a fire chief watching smoke pour from a burning building
and ordering the crew not to respond, even as firefighters volunteered
to go in.

The resigning officials, then, were not merely objecting to a
particular judgment call. In effect, they were saying that if the
Criminal Section does not have jurisdiction over a case like this, its
role has been reduced to near irrelevance.

DOJ instead assigned the investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office
for the District of Minnesota. But that office lacks the expertise,
experience, and institutional stature to undertake an inquiry that
goes to ICE’s core mission and legitimacy. Moreover, on Tuesday,
three federal prosecutors from that office quit
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over the DOJ’s apparent disinterest in investigating Ross and its
push to investigate Good’s widow.

Nor is the broader context hard to discern. A serious civil rights
investigation—or worse, a criminal prosecution—would cut directly
against the administration’s signature priority: an aggressive,
high-visibility immigration enforcement campaign, in which forceful
tactics are treated as proof of resolve rather than excess. Calling
this shooting into question would not merely implicate one agent; it
would threaten the legitimacy of a brute-force enforcement regime that
is Trump’s pride and joy. And it would come at a moment when the
president is reportedly already furious with Attorney General Pam
Bondi and senior immigration officials over perceived softness and
setbacks.

There is also a more calculating dimension to the assignment. Even if
toothless, a federal investigation provides a ready rationale for
declining parallel inquiries and resisting cooperation.

That concern is not theoretical. Federal authorities reversed an
initial plan for a joint investigation with Minnesota officials,
shifting the probe to exclusive FBI control and cutting off the
Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from evidence and access.
State officials—including Attorney General Keith Ellison and
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty—have said publicly that this
move hamstrung their ability to conduct an independent investigation.

Minnesota responded Monday with a lawsuit against the Department of
Homeland Security, ICE, and senior federal officials, seeking to block
the massive immigration enforcement surge in the Twin Cities. The
complaint characterizes the deployment of more than 2,000 armed agents
as an “invasion” and alleges unlawful tactics—warrantless stops
and arrests in sensitive locations, racial profiling, and
unconstitutional conduct that has disrupted daily life and eroded
public safety. It further asserts that the campaign bears no genuine
connection to its stated goals and instead reflects a retaliatory
pattern of federal action aimed at Minnesota because of its political
leadership and demographics.

This case is shaping up to be a scandal along the lines of the January
6 pardons and the reprisal prosecutions. Wherever its investigation is
housed, it cannot be credible while it remains under the political
control of an administration that has already prejudged the
case—publicly, loudly, and at the highest levels.

The feds’ normal response in a case of this gravity would be to
assign the Criminal Section to conduct a vigorous, independent
investigation, working in cooperation with state authorities and
following the facts wherever they lead. The second defensible option
would be to step aside in favor of the state—which has its own
compelling interest in enforcing criminal law and protecting its
citizens. Instead of either option, federal authorities are choosing
to hamstring meaningful scrutiny and insulate possibly grave criminal
conduct from accountability. That path is unprecedented and
indefensible.

Excessive force by officers is not new. What is novel for the United
States is the use of federal power afterward to stifle investigation
and shield wrongdoing. That turn—from lethal force to enforced
impunity—is an abuse of authority and a hallmark of authoritarian
governance.

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Harry Litman is a senior legal columnist at _The New Republic,_ a
senior fellow at the USC Center on Communication Leadership and
Policy, and the creator of Talking Feds
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and political issues. A lawyer, professor, and legal commentator, he
is the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania
and has served as a deputy assistant attorney general at the
Department of Justice. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Thurgood
Marshall and Anthony Kennedy, and has taught at UCLA School of Law and
UC San Diego. He is also a former legal affairs columnist at the_ Los
Angeles Times._

* Renee Nicole Good
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