Six US Prosecutors Resign in Minnesota as Crackdown Builds (1)

Six Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned Tuesday, including two top investigators of the daycare scandal animating Trump’s base, departures that may complicate the Justice Department’s crackdown on alleged public benefits fraud.

Those departing include Joe Thompson, Minnesota’s acting US attorney earlier in President Donald Trump’s term who was leading the office’s escalating response to federal program schemes, and Harry Jacobs, another prosecutor who coordinated cases involving improper child nutrition program payments, said three people familiar with the situation.

One of the individuals familiar with the resignations, who all spoke anonymously about sensitive personnel matters, said that Thompson and Jacobs were the two prosecutors remaining in the office with the most institutional knowledge of the massive Feeding Our Future scandal involving federally funded nutrition programs during the Covid-19 pandemic. It remains unclear who will take over the assignment, as Trump officials have sought to expand its reach.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) condemned the development as “the latest sign that President Trump is pushing nonpartisan career professionals out of the Department of Justice and replacing them with his sycophants.” Walz’s statement referred to resignations of “at least six prosecutors.”

The New York Times reported earlier that their exits stemmed from pressure on the prosecutors to investigate the widow of Renée Nicole Good, a woman killed Jan. 7 by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer—and DOJ’s decision not to probe the shooter.

A representative for the Minnesota US attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The resignations come amid broader upheaval in the Justice Department, with at least five senior lawyers in the Civil Rights Division on Monday announcing their planned departures, according to people familiar with the situation. Those include the chief of the division’s criminal section, which worked closely with federal prosecutors in Minnesota after the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in 2020.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced last week that she’d be sending prosecutors from other parts of the US to support the Minneapolis-based district in efforts to root out fraud and the White House has since announced the creation of a new DOJ fraud division to combat government program misconduct in Minnesota and elsewhere.

The sudden departures among Minnesota prosecutors follows a pattern in other liberal-leaning districts where DOJ has surged immigration enforcement resources, leading to protests and a spike in charges for impeding or assaulting officers.

US attorney’s offices in Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago have all experienced a mass exodus of experienced prosecutors following White House pressure to prosecute protesters—including in cases where grand juries took the rare step of rejecting indictments.

Thompson served as acting US attorney from May through October last year, before becoming the office’s top deputy to Minnesota’s Trump-appointed US Attorney Daniel Rosen.