A supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office who unsuccessfully attempted to investigate the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who fatally shot Renee Nicole Good in the city on 7 January has resigned, according to multiple reports.
News of agent Tracee Mergen’s resignation surfaced shortly before federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday. Pretti and Good were both 37-year-old US citizens.
Mergen resigned following pressure from the bureau in Washington DC to discontinue an inquiry into ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who shot Good to death as videos showed her trying to drive away from a confrontation, according to the New York Times and NBC News.
Those outlets cited sources. The FBI has not commented on Mergen’s resignation, saying it does not comment on personnel matters.
Saturday’s killing sparked an escalating public protest that threw Minneapolis once again into a complex three-way situation among demonstrators who want federal agents to be held accountable for Pretti’s killing, state and local law enforcement, and the Trump administration.
Mergen’s decision to leave the bureau, meanwhile, comes as Trump’s justice department has said it sees no reason for initiating a civil rights investigation into Good’s killing, which had also prompted street protests.
“There is currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation,” deputy attorney general Todd Blanche said in a statement on 13 January. The Trump administration has argued that Ross acted in self-defense after Good obstructed federal law enforcement operations with her vehicle, endangering the agent.
Federal authorities have refused to co-operate with local authorities, leading to claims by Democratic officials that the federal government is involved in a coverup.
A superintendent with the Minnesota bureau of criminal apprehension (BCA) said the agency had “reluctantly withdrawn” from the investigation. And six federal prosecutors resigned over requests to investigate Good’s widow, who was present during the deadly confrontation.
Reports emerged on Saturday that Mergen had testified against Tom Barrack, a close friend and fundraiser for Donald Trump who served as served as chair of the president’s first inaugural committee. Mergen’s testimony was in a 2022 case against Barrack over his alleged ties to UAE officials.
At trial, Barrack’s defense team suggested that Mergen lied to a grand jury over Barrack’s allegedly undisclosed ties when she testified that Barrack said during the interview that he did not “feel” he was asked to do anything on behalf of the Gulf state.
In 2021, justice department prosecutors in New York had charged Barrack in a seven-count indictment accusing him of “acting and conspiring to act” as a UAE agent between April 2016 and April 2018 – and making false statements.
Barrack denied the charges. And a jury later acquitted him of all counts by a jury of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, obstruction of justice and making false statements.
