Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and state officials demanded Saturday that local authorities handle the investigation into the federal agent’s shooting of a Minnesota resident.
State officials have said they were both blocked from accessing the scene to gather evidence and left without adequate resources to safely control the surrounding area. Department of Homeland Security officials have said they are running an investigation.
DHS personnel prohibited state officials from accessing the location after city police officials requested assistance, said Drew Evans, the superintendent of Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. State officials then obtained a search warrant for the scene — an unusual maneuver — but were again blocked from gathering evidence by federal officials, Evans said.
“We took the step of getting the search warrant because we were denied access to the scene, so we thought we’d be able to get access to the scene, much like we would anywhere else, by having an independent judge agree that we have probable cause to investigate,” Evans said at a BCA press conference late Saturday afternoon.
Trending
“They said that this was a scene and matter being investigated by the federal government, and they would not allow us physical access,” he added. “We were denied after we provided information we had a warrant.”
He described how state officials then again tried to access the scene after Federal Bureau of Investigation officials finished their own evidence collection and left the area, but the area became unsafe for state officials after federal officers left.
“Federal law enforcement left the scene, and left us there,” said Bob Jacobson, the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, in a Saturday press conference alongside Walz. “We did not have enough resources to be able to hold that ground safely, and we had to leave that scene because of the number of people that were available.”
“We were not able to do really any work at the scene once we had access, because it was quickly overrun and overtaken,” Evans said an hour later at the BCA press conference.
During Saturday’s press conference, Walz also called for President Donald Trump to remove the thousands of federal immigration officers deployed in the state, calling their behavior an “absolute abomination” during the press conference.
“First request was to get her people out of there, to get these federal agents out of there,” Walz said, describing two calls with White House officials on Saturday, including with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. “And second call is with no uncertain terms that will investigate this. We will not be stonewalled.”
Federal officials prohibited state officials from investigating and accessing evidence after federal officials shot and killed Renee Good, a U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis earlier in January.
Trump appeared to blame Minnesota’s state and local government for the shooting in social media posts Saturday morning. “The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric!” he wrote in a post that linked the shooting to fraud investigations ongoing in the state.
Just before the press conference with Walz, Customs and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino provided few details, saying that the “investigation is ongoing” in a press conference that lasted only five minutes.
Bovino alleged that the man — who local law enforcement officials believe to be a U.S. citizen — “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement” because he was carrying a gun and two magazines with ammunition.
Bovino provided no specifics about how the Trump administration reached that conclusion. Bystander videos of the killing appear to show agents disarming the man of his gun and bringing him to the ground before an agent discharged his weapon several times, killing him.
Walz told reporters that the man had a concealed carry permit for the weapon.
“Thank God we have video,” Walz said. “It’s nonsense, people. It is nonsense, and it’s lies.”
“They’re telling you not to trust your eyes and ears, not to trust that fact that you’re seeing in front of them,” he added later in the press conference.
Bovino declined to answer questions about those videos during his press conference. He also said that the officer who shot and killed the man has been a Border Patrol agent for eight years.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the man who was killed “an assassin” in a post on X about one hour before Walz and Bovino spoke to the press.
Author
