CNN report: Federal immigration agents lied to prosecutors during Operation Metro Surge

The report, based on both named and unnamed sources who previously worked in the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office, details the chaotic 18 days between the January killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Among the key details:

Border Patrol commander was unfazed by Good killing

During a conference call after Good was killed, then-Commander Gregory Bovino of the Border Patrol stunned prosecutors with his language about subduing Minnesota: “We’re going to pacify this place, we’re going to roll ‘em up. We’re not going to wait on the local PD, we’re not going to piss with it,” he said, according to CNN.

Bovino also complained that U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen, who is Jewish, was not reachable for portions of the weekend because he observes the Sabbath. Bovino mockingly referred to him as one of the “chosen people.”

Bovino told CNN he didn’t intend for the comment to be antisemitic and he was simply frustrated that Rosen was unavailable on a Saturday. He wanted someone to “answer the goddamn phone.”

Prosecutor says Operation Metro Surge was ‘antithetical to principles of law enforcement’

A key source for the story is Tom Calhoun-Lopez, then the chief of the violent and major crimes section for the Minnesota U.S. attorney’s office and an Army veteran. He told CNN that instructions to his office were “antithetical to principles of law enforcement. I could not reconcile what I was being asked to do with my duty to the law and to the Constitution of the United States.”

8 weeks under siege in Minnesota

Calhoun-Lopez compared the operation to a military occupation: “From the beginning, (Department of Homeland Security) conducted the operation in a paramilitary posture,” he told Tapper. “It had all the appearance and the mentality of a military occupation, and the ethos was they would subdue the state.”

Chaos and confusion in aftermath of Good killing

Homeland Security Investigations agents argued with Minneapolis Police Department officers as to who would control the scene after the Good shooting in south Minneapolis. Joe Thompson, who was running the office of U.S. attorney in Rosen’s absence and is known to Minnesotans for his prosecution of Feeding Our Future and other fraud cases, feared massive urban unrest and told the federal officials at the Whipple Building to call the agents back.

Good is smeared

The false claims by senior administration officials that Good was a “domestic terrorist” were the result of “immigration agents on the ground in both written and oral reports providing false or misleading information to them,” Tapper reports.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller and others in the White House were pushing for the administration to more aggressively label protesters “domestic terrorists.”

For a brief period, “Trump administration officials advocated for the Good shooting to be investigated internally by DHS; essentially the agency would investigate itself.” In the end, the FBI would wind up investigating with DHS, but local officials were blocked from evidence.

More recently, the feds have shared evidence with local prosecutors after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty and Attorney General Keith Ellison sued the federal government for evidence.

Immigration agents sent to schools

Thompson’s instructions to federal officers to stand down at the Whipple Building were overruled, and DHS agents were ordered back into action.

“The message conveyed to them was that they had to go to hockey rinks, they had to go to schools, they had to go to the most hot button places they could possibly go,” Tapper writes.

Investigation into Good

Prosecutors sought a warrant to search Good’s car the day after her killing to conduct forensic analysis. A judge signed off on it, but the FBI did nothing.

“DOJ officials told the prosecutors to claw the warrant back and replace it with a new warrant for an investigation into Good as a domestic terrorist who was guilty of an assault on a federal officer.

“The grounds for the warrant weren’t particularly relevant, the prosecutors tried to explain to DOJ officials and Rosen. Moreover, any judge would surely reject the request and even potentially hold them in contempt since the first warrant had already been signed,” Tapper writes.

Rosen returns, ready to carry water

Rosen, who was absent from the key events around the killing of Good, returned to the office Monday, Jan. 12. His message, according to Tapper’s prosecutor source, was that the office would investigate Good for an assault of a federal officer and take investigative steps with Good’s wife Becca Good.

“The prosecutors thought this was madness. Not only was there no evidence, it didn’t make much sense to investigate a dead woman who could never be charged with anything,” Tapper writes.

The shooting of Pretti was widely seen by prosecutors as illegal.

“The Justice Department says the shooting (of Alex Pretti)” is still being investigated jointly by DHS and the FBI. But the fact that no charges have been filed in six months is seen by the former prosecutors as outrageous,” Tapper writes.

“It was an execution,” a third prosecutor told CNN. “It was a summary execution. And it is that simple.”