Tim Walz's dishonest news conference

Tim Welz, Minnesota's DFL governor, held a dishonest, deceptive news conference Thursday morning in Blaine, MN. In that news conference, Gov. Walz "reiterated that the Trump administration denied the state the ability to participate in the investigation and urged them to reconsider. He questioned if Minnesotans would trust the outcome without state investigators' input." What Gov. Walz intentionally omitted was that this was a federal case because it involved an ICE agent. The state doesn't have jurisdiction to participate in this investigation. Strongly implied in Gov. Walz's statement was that the Trump administration couldn't be trusted to fairly investigate the shooting.

Additionally, it wasn't possible to not detect Gov. Walz's anti-law enforcement prejudice. Repeatedly, he omitted the fact that Renee Nicole Good tried repeatedly to prevent ICE agents from making arrests. In fact, at the time of the shooting, ICE agents were trying to arrest her. When she wouldn't submit to getting handcuffed, she put the vehicle in reverse, then she put the vehicle in forward.

Bob Jacobsen, the commissioner of Minnesota's Department of Public Safety, "Without any of that information or without any of that assistance from the FBI and the federal government, we would be at a loss to initiate and conduct a thorough investigation. For us to be able to do that, it would be extremely difficult—if not impossible—without cooperation from the federal government." Then there's this:

That could impede the state from making the decision to file any criminal charges against the officer, Jacobsen said, citing the need for a full investigation.

"I will not as a public safety professional jump to any conclusions as to who is at fault in this," he told reporters. "What I will say, though, is that unless we do that thorough investigation, unless we have access to all of that evidence, unless we have access to agents that were involved in that and to any witnesses—without any of that, we would not be able to put together a quality investigation for any prosecutor to be able to make a determination as to whether or not someone should be charged with a crime."

Actually, there isn't a debate on whether the state will prosecute. The Constitution contains something known as separation of powers. It's mostly about lines of jurisdiction. Because this shooting involved a federal law enforcement officer, any indictment would come from a federal grand jury. Any prosecution would be federal.

According to David Strom's excellent reporting, we now have this important information:

CONFIRMED: There is a group chat with other activists assigned to follow ICE agents.

The craziest part about these organized activists is that they are led by Democratic state elected officials. State Rep. Alex Falconer and State Rep. Brad Tabke operate semi-private networks that dispatch activists to ICE operations. They are doing this openly with sign-up websites. Tabke’s site, “ICE Watch,” allows for one shift a week. A maximum of three shifts are encouraged. Falconer gave an interview to Eden Prairie Local News, bragging about his “ICE watching network.” Interestingly, he was also speaking against “anti-Somali rhetoric” at a Muslim event center while calling for community involvement against ICE.

Brad Tabke's name immediately cauuught my attention. He won his re-election by 13 votes. The thing is that 20 ballots were thrown out. They never got counted. This might well be enough to tip the race against Rep. Tabke.

Finally, after considering all of this information that Tim Walz wants us to believe he's capable of conducting a fair investigation. Letting anti-ICE activists influence this investigation isn't foolish. It's stupid.