Justice Department will investigate Renee Good's wife but not the man who killed her

The U.S. Department of Justice is indeed investigating Becca Good, the wife of Renee Nicole Good, the woman who was killed by a federal agent January 7 in Minneapolis. One person it isn’t investigating: Jonathan Ross, the agent who shot her.

The DOJ is investigating Becca Good under a law against “assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers,” sources told NBC News. Several important DOJ employees have already quit because they knew the department intended to investigate her.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has claimed that Renee and Becca Good threatened Ross in an act of “domestic terrorism.” They were driving through an area where Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers were seeking out undocumented immigrants when Ross walked in front of their SUV.

Video shows Renee Good saying, “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you,” while another officer tells her to get out of the vehicle. Becca Good then appears to say “Drive,” while Renee Good turns away from Ross and starts to drive off. Shots then ring out. Footage Ross took with his own cell phone shows that he was not in the path of the vehicle and that he called Good a “fucking bitch” after firing.

Yet Noem has claimed that Renee Good hit Ross with her SUV. “It was used as a weapon, and the officer feels as though his life was in jeopardy,” she said the day after the shooting. “It was used to perpetuate a violent act, and this officer took action to protect himself and to protect his fellow law enforcement officers.”

Related: Who is Jonathan Ross? ICE agent who killed Renee Good once broke a suspect's car window

Donald Trump has called the couple “professional agitators” who were “highly disrespectful of law enforcement.” He described Becca Good as Renee Good’s “friend,” minimizing their relationship.

Noem has also alleged that the couple had been following ICE agents “all day” and impeding their work, although Renee Good was killed before 10 a.m. Her family said she and her wife had just dropped off their son at school when they encountered the agents randomly and decided to stop and see if they could help their neighbors.

Related: Who was Renee Nicole Good? Remembering the Minneapolis poet and mother killed by ICE

Attorney General Pam Bondi, who heads the DOJ, issued a memo last month listing justifications for investigating and prosecuting supposed “domestic terrorists.” The memo, viewed by NBC and other media sources, noted laws under which the DOJ could charge “culpable actors, such as certain Antifa-aligned extremists” who are inspired by “the types of extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment listed below, with a willingness to use violence against law-abiding citizenry to serve those beliefs.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, both Democrats and critics of the Trump administration, are also under DOJ investigation, NBC and other outlets report. The department alleges they impeded federal officers through statements they have made. They have said the investigations are politically motivated.

Related: After ICE killing of Renee Good, Minnesota and cities sue Trump over 'unlawful policing tactics'

Normally, the DOJ would investigate law enforcement officers in cases like Renee Good’s, but it has largely abandoned this practice, NBC notes. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News Sunday that there was no need to investigate Ross. “Look, what happened that day has been reviewed by millions and millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones,” Blanche said. “The Department of Justice, our civil rights unit, we don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger. We never do.” Before joining the DOJ, Blanche was one of Trump’s personal lawyers.

In 2020, during Trump’s first term, the DOJ conducted a criminal investigation into the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. It led to charges and convictions. Fox News did not ask Blanche what made Good’s case different from Floyd’s.

Also Sunday, on CBS’s Face the Nation, Noem repeated her false claim that Ross “got attacked with a car that was trying to take his life.” Homeland Security, of which ICE is part, is doing an internal investigation of Ross’s action, “but Minneapolis officials are concerned about the seriousness of such a probe” because of Noem’s statements, NBC reports.

The FBI is doing an investigation but has excluded Minnesota officials from any role. Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty is trying to gather evidence to see if she could bring charges against Ross locally, NBC notes.

Regarding the investigation of Becca Good, Thomas Brzozowski, who was counsel for domestic terrorism at the DOJ for 10 years before resigning in 2025, told NBC it’s “super dangerous” for the department to be using the term “domestic terrorism” “in a manner that is untethered from its statutory framework.”

Bondi’s memo would allow for “a fairly sprawling investigation of those that were connected to the victim and her spouse, which would extend to individuals that perhaps provided training on how to engage in protest activity along those lines,” he said.