Donald Trump has added two more names to his hit list: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. This weekend was dominated by news that the Department of Justice is investigating the two Minnesota leaders for conspiring to impede federal ICE agents. Since then, we have learned little about the details of the alleged conspiracy — no doubt, in part, because there wasn’t one.
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January 20, 2026
Donald Trump has added two more names to his hit list: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. This weekend was dominated by news that the Department of Justice is investigating the two Minnesota leaders for conspiring to impede federal ICE agents. Since then, we have learned little about the details of the alleged conspiracy — no doubt, in part, because there wasn’t one.
Nevertheless, Donald Trump has made clear that he expects his prosecutors to operate according to a principle attributed to the head of Joseph Stalin’s secret police: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
At this point, it is clear that Donald Trump has contempt for the rule of law and little understanding of the Constitution. When he attacks the civil and constitutional rights of his opponents, he is acting out of malice born of ignorance.
What is remarkable is not that Trump targets his perceived enemies — James Comey, Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Jay Powell, to name a few — but that the senior lawyers around him enable this behavior rather than resist it.
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Once again, we are seeing that dynamic play out.
This weekend, the current Deputy Attorney General of the United States, Todd Blanche, appeared on television to defend the investigation of Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey. Blanche is a former federal prosecutor with Big Law credentials who previously served on Trump’s criminal defense team.
Asked about the investigation, Blanche said: “You saw the governor and the mayor actively encouraging criminals to go out on the street and impede ICE. That is not allowed under our law.”
This is not the first time a senior Justice Department official has carried water for Trump in precisely this way. We have seen this movie before.
A year ago, Trump wanted to drop the charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had been indicted for conspiracy, bribery and fraud on what appeared to be strong evidence. The task of making that happen fell to Emile Bove.
At the time, Bove was the acting deputy attorney general of the United States — the same position Blanche now occupies on a permanent basis. Like Bove, Blanche held a senior position in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. After leaving the government, he too joined Trump’s criminal defense team.
Bove knew that ordering his former colleagues in the Southern District of New York to drop the Adams case was wrong. Yet he did it anyway. The assistant U.S. attorney responsible for the case, Hagan Scotten, refused and resigned instead. Here is how he explained his decision in his resignation letter:
I can even understand how a Chief Executive whose background is in business and politics might see the contemplated dismissal-with-leverage as a good, if distasteful, deal. But any assistant U.S. attorney would know that our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way. If no lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.
Bove eventually found his fool and coward to file the motion to dismiss the Adams indictment. He was rewarded with a federal court of appeals judgeship, but he will always be stained by his role in that affair. Meanwhile, Scotten is enjoying a strong legal practice and a sterling reputation.
That history matters because it explains exactly what we are seeing now in Minnesota.
Everything Blanche said on television is false. We have not seen either the governor or the mayor “actively encourage criminals” to “impede ICE.”
In fact, the statements most often cited by Trump’s defenders express precisely the opposite. Mayor Frey, for example, has been criticized by Republicans for the following:
“We’re in a position right now where we have residents asking the very limited number of police officers that we have to fight ICE agents on the street. We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another.”
This is not a call to impede ICE. To the contrary, Frey is rejecting requests by citizens to have local police “fight ICE on the street.”
Frey has also been criticized by Trump and Co. for telling ICE to “get the fuck out of Minneapolis.” Gov. Walz’s statements have been even tamer but expressed similar frustration with ICE.
Regardless of whether one agrees with the governor or mayor or approves of their language, such statements fall squarely within speech protected by the First Amendment.
More than 50 years ago, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court held that “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
A few years later, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a protester who shouted, “We’ll take the fucking street later,” after police cleared a protest involving hundreds of people who had refused to obey police orders.
Like many other politically motivated investigations, the probe into Gov. Walz and Mayor Frey will almost certainly lead nowhere. But that does not mean it won’t cause real harm to the rule of law and to our democracy.
Blanche knows this. He knows the law.
But perhaps he hopes that blind loyalty and disregard for constitutional limits will be rewarded — if not with a federal judgeship, then something else. He certainly knows that explaining the Constitution to Trump is a waste of time and energy. Maybe he too has come around to Trump’s contempt for the rule of law.
That is his choice — every bit as much as it was Scotten’s choice to resign rather than carry out Bove’s directive to dismiss Adams’ indictment. The damage of Blanche’s choices, however, will long outlast any individual career advancement. After all, what power does a judgeship hold if the rule of law no longer exists?
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