STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Trump administration officials have made the Minneapolis shooting part of their messaging war. They have rushed to be the first to claim that they know the motive of the woman who was killed. President Trump said she, quote, "viciously ran over" an ICE officer, which videos do not show. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Vice President Vance also used their taxpayer-funded positions to disparage the motives of a citizen.
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JD VANCE: That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation in the United States of America.
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KRISTI NOEM: These vehicle rammings are domestic acts of terrorism. We're working with the Department of Justice to prosecute them as such.
INSKEEP: The President's border czar, Tom Homan, was more restrained on CBS, saying, quote, "let the investigation play out" and "it would be unprofessional to comment."
Elliott Williams has been listening to all this. He is a former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general and former senior official at ICE. Elliott, welcome back.
ELLIOTT WILLIAMS: Hi there, Steve.
INSKEEP: Based on the evidence that we have, do you think you know Renee Good's reason for being on that street and driving the car as she did?
WILLIAMS: Steve, I have absolutely no idea why Renee Good was on that street and driving the way she did. Now - and quite frankly, neither does the secretary of homeland security or the vice president of the United States. That is why in countless investigations over the course of time immemorial, federal officials, when speaking about police-involved shootings, typically have held back providing comment before all of the facts were known.
At a minimum, Steve, there's a factual dispute as to why she was there, whether the officer might have had a lawful basis for shooting her. And it behooves everybody, particularly the vice president of the United States and the secretary of homeland security, to exercise some caution before all the facts are out.
INSKEEP: And I guess we should note, many people thought they knew everything they needed to know from whichever video they preferred on the first day. But we've seen more videos, more analysis of videos, comments of loved ones and friends of Renee Good. There's a statement about her having dropped off a 6-year-old just before the incident. We don't know how many minutes she was on the street, exactly. There's a lot of stuff that is not known at this point, right?
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. And again, you know, I - quite frankly, I would even advise caution in trying to glean too much about the background of the victim of the shooting because, you know, to be frank, even good people sometimes do bad things. But let's be clear, there is no evidence, at least that I've seen publicly, that this individual did - Renee Good did.
Now, to be clear, what is known is that there's conflicting information about even directions that she might have gotten from law enforcement. Was an officer telling her to stop or was another one telling her to move on? And those are the kinds of things that any investigation, Steve, would go into if it were allowed to play out properly.
INSKEEP: Interesting that you mention the investigation because Meg Anderson noted for us the FBI has taken charge of this investigation, and state officials are complaining they've been shut out and not allowed access to the evidence. Is that normal?
WILLIAMS: It's not normal. Well, what is normal is turf battles between state and local law enforcement - quite frankly, even within law enforcement agencies. ICE, where I worked for about five years, the two major offices within ICE, immigration and customs, are often at odds with each other over the very existence of the agency. So that's nothing new. Yes.
Now, this idea of freezing out state and local officials is quite remarkable. And let's be clear - and here's why - there was a homicide committed in Minneapolis. It may not have been a murder. It may not have been a manslaughter. It may not have even been illegal at all. It may have been an exercise of proper law enforcement. But that's for the state. States typically are the ones who investigate homicides unless they're not - unless they hate crimes. And so this idea that state officials cannot investigate one of the basic laws of their jurisdiction and work with federal law enforcement really is a departure from certainly much of what I've seen. Again, they can have their differences, but it's quite wrong to freeze them out.
INSKEEP: And then I want to connect these two things we've talked about. We've noted that senior officials in the administration - not all of them, but the president on down - have said they already know what happened here. The president has asserted that he has complete control over the Department of Justice in all law enforcement matters, and it is now that Department of Justice that says, we alone will investigate what happened here. What questions are raised in your mind by that?
WILLIAMS: Well, if the president has made clear that nothing - if there's nothing to see here, how can we trust that the Justice Department will exercise a proper investigation? Quite frankly, the person who's been most measured and most respectable on this, believe it or not, is Tom Homan, the White House border czar, whom you quoted or cited at the top of the interview. I worked with Tom for many, many years when I was at ICE. And to be clear, you know, he's as immigration hard-line as anybody else who's out there.
He's the one who issued the most unequivocal statement that we ought to exercise caution when speaking about this. Why? 'Cause he's, quite frankly, the only career law enforcement official that seems to be the voice in the room here. And if anybody would listen to my advice here, it's simply for the government to take a beat and recognize that sometimes law enforcement does bad things. Most of the time, they do not. But when there's the allegation that they might have, proper investigations and process ought to play out.
INSKEEP: Is it possible that the administration jumping to conclusions harms the officer? If they clear him in the end, people are not going to believe it.
WILLIAMS: Yeah. I mean, I think they have done themselves a great disservice - one, by keeping out the state officials, but two, with the - how unequivocal they've been in speaking about it because it is now hard for many people in the public to trust what comes from Washington. And again, law enforcement officials are entitled to a great degree of deference. You know, they make tough decisions on the spot, but that doesn't mean that they're infallible.
INSKEEP: Elliott Williams, we've got to stop it there. Thanks so much. Former deputy assistant attorney general. Thanks.
WILLIAMS: No problem. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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