CNN’s Elie Honig Goes Off On DOJ Reportedly Pushing Probe Into Renee Good’s Widow: ‘Utter Outrage’

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig called it “utterly indefensible” if a report is true that top prosecutors in Minnesota resigned after being pressured to investigate the widow of Renee Good, who was shot and killed last week by an ICE agent in Minneapolis.

Honig joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s The Lead on Tuesday, where he went off on a New York Times report on six prosecutors resigning in Minnesota. According to the report, prosecutors like Joseph H. Thompson, formerly second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office, resigned over a push by the DOJ to investigate the widow of Good.

Good was shot and killed last week by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. ICE officials have claimed Ross acted in self-defense, and Good used her car as a weapon, a narrative local officials like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) have rejected. Footage from the scene shows Good partially blocking a roadway for agents. When they try to get her out of the vehicle, she moves her car, and Ross lets off three rounds.

Honig argued on Tuesday that if senior DOJ officials really were pressing for an investigation into actions by her widow, then they had every reason to resign.

He said:

It’s an utter outrage. If the Department of Justice has chosen to focus their investigation not on the actions of the officer, not on actions of Renee Good at the scene of the fatal shooting, but rather on the widow of the deceased, that is indefensible. First of all, whatever the widow of Renee Good may have done, what her associations may have been is completely and totally irrelevant to the question of whether this was a justified legal self-defense shooting by the ICE officer.

Second of all, prosecutors get leads on cases from all different places. Sometimes a cooperator or an informant will give you leads. Sometimes you’ll read a story in the newspaper, but to get a lead based on a person who was fatally shot and say, now let’s look at that person’s widow to see if they broke the law, it’s utterly indefensible. And I think it lends context to why these prosecutors chose to resign.

Watch above via CNN.