Minneapolis mayor urges FBI to include state officials in Renee Good inquiry

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey called on Sunday for the federal government to allow his state to become involved in the investigation of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, saying that the Trump administration had been “so quick to jump on a narrative as opposed to the truth”.

Frey and others have expressed concerns about whether the Trump administration’s investigation into Good’s death would be fair and impartial because, among other reasons, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, immediately described Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism” when significant questions remained about Good’s intent while driving after an ICE officer attempted to remove her from her car.

Noem later said that state-level prosecutors “don’t have any jurisdiction in this investigation”.

JD Vance, the US vice-president also said that the ICE officer is “protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job”.

On NBC’s Meet the Press, Frey said the FBI should include Minnesota’s bureau of criminal apprehension in its investigation.

“We need to be doing this transparently, and what I was pushing back on from the very beginning was a narrative that had jumped to that conclusion right from the get-go,” Frey said, referring to Noem’s “domestic terrorism” depiction. “When you’ve got a federal administration that is so quick to jump on a narrative as opposed to the truth, I think we all need to be speaking out.”

Noem labeled it terrorism before the release of footage from the officer’s cellphone in which Good calmly says “I’m not mad at you” to an ICE agent seconds before she was shot.

After, someone, who appears to be the officer who fired shots, called her a “fucking bitch”.

Other video analyses determined that Good was turning away from the officer rather than trying to run him over, as Trump officials have claimed.

Tina Smith, a Democratic US senator from Minnesota, also questioned the legitimacy of Trump administration’s investigation of Good’s death.

“What I see, especially because they are blocking state investigators from participating in any way in this investigation [is] that they have a strategy of putting out what their version of events are,” Smith said on Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “That is very dangerous, and I don’t think people are going to buy it, particularly after you see these videos.”

When asked about the investigation and the domestic terrorism allegations, Noem and Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” have deflected to bashing the state and local governance.

But when pushed about Noem’s allegation, Homan said on Sunday on Meet the Press, “I don’t know what Secretary Noem knows and what I know. I can tell you what they did is illegal. And if you look up this definition of terrorism, it could fall within that definition, if you look up the definition of terrorism.”

Before the Sunday interview, Frey sparked national headlines for saying during a press conference after the shooting: “To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”

He also described the claim that the officer shot Good in self-defense as “bullshit”.

Asked on Sunday by NBC host Kristen Welker whether he bore any responsibility for the political temperature, Frey said yes but also added: “To those that are offended, I’m sorry I offended their delicate ears. But as far as who inflamed the situation, you know, I dropped an F-bomb, and they killed somebody. I think the killing somebody is the inflammatory element here.”