AG Garland Announces Federal Charges Against Four Louisville Cops for Falsifying Affidavit to Obtain Search Warrant For Breonna Taylor’s Home

Over two years after Breonna Taylor was fatally shot during a no-knock raid on her home, those hoping someone would be held accountable for her death have new hope, after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced new federal charges had been filed against four current and former Louisville police officers.

MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported the news Thursday morning, cueing a video of Garland making the announcement.

The Department of Justice has charged four current and former officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department, Garland said. The charges were also announced in a press release on the DOJ website.

“Members of the Place-Based Investigations Unit falsified the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant of Ms. Taylor’s home,” he continued. “That this act violated federal civil rights laws, and that those violations resulted in Ms. Taylor’s death. Specifically, we allege that Ms. Taylor’s fourth amendment rights were violated when defendants Joshua Jaynes, Kelly Goodlett, and Kyle Meany sought a warrant to search Ms. Taylor’s home knowing that the officers lacked probable cause for the search.”

The officers then conspired to fabricate a “false cover story in an attempt to escape responsibility for their roles in preparing the warrant affidavit that contained false information,” said Garland. The charges against these three included civil rights offenses, unlawful conspiracies, unconstitutional use of force, and obstruction offenses.

The fourth officer charged, Brett Hankison, was fired from the LMPD several months after Taylor’s death. He was the only officer involved who had previously faced any charges at all, being indicted by a state grand jury for three charges of felony wanton endangerment for shots he fired that went into an adjacent apartment occupied by a family of three. He was acquitted on these charges earlier this year. The new federal charges against Hankison were for two counts of deprivation of rights under color of law.

“Breonna Taylor should be alive today,” said Garland. “The Justice Department is committed to defending and protecting the civil rights of every person in this country.  That was this Department’s founding purpose, and it remains our urgent mission.”

Mitchell turned to her guests for analysis of the charges, NBC’s Ken Dilanian and former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.

“This is a major, major indictment by the Department of Justice today,” said Dilanian, “in a case where no one was charged by the state directly in Breonna Taylor’s death,” referring to the only charges against Hankison being for endangering Taylor’s neighbors.

An internal investigation found that Jaynes “did not personally verify” the information he put in the warrant application claiming that Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer, was receiving packages at her address. Instead, noted Dilanian, Jaynes “relied on another officer’s word that proved to be false.” The DOJ allegations accuse these officers of conspiring to “mislead state, local, and federal investigators,” Dilanian continued, “as they tried to piece together” what had happened that night.

McQuade commented that she had “often puzzled” why the officers had been able to obtain a no-knock warrant in this situation in the first place. “So learning that they have made false representations to obtain a warrant, that was the crack in this case. And they found it and filed these charges.”

She credited the “dogged determination” of Assistant Attorney General Kristin Clarke in moving this case forward to the point where charges were now being filed.

“And to those that say that lies are mere process crimes, this demonstrates why pursuing those lies are so important, by finding that cover of false statements, they were able to charge this case in way they couldn’t charge it under the law, looking solely at the shooting itself,” McQuade concluded.

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

This is a breaking story and has been updated with additional information.