Trump administration covering up

Trump administration covering up Minneapolis shooting, Sen. Tina Smith says

"They were calling her a domestic terrorist before they even knew what her name was," she said of Renee Good.

By David Cohen

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said Sunday the Trump administration is orchestrating a cover-up of the events surrounding the fatal shooting of Renee Good last week.

“I mean I think what we are seeing here is the federal government, Kristi Noem, Vice President Vance, Donald Trump, attempt to cover up what happened here in the Twin Cities,” the senator said on ABC’s “This Week.” “And I don’t think that people here and around the country are believing it.”

When host Martha Raddatz told the senator that was a serious allegation, Smith confirmed she meant what she said.

“What I mean by that,” Smith told Raddatz, “is that you can see everything that they are doing is trying to shape the narrative, to say what happened, without any investigation. And, you know, hours after Renee Good was shot and killed by federal agents, Kristi Noem was already telling us exactly what had happened. They were calling her a domestic terrorist before they even knew what her name was.

ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Good on a Minneapolis street last week. At issue is whether Ross had reason to do so, in particular whether he had reason to believe his life was in imminent danger. The Trump administration has argued that he did, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on CNN’s “State of the Union” doubling down Sunday on her assertion that Good was a dangerous person who was breaking the law.

Smith, who is retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, doubted that claim.

“I understand how law enforcement, professional law enforcement, is trained,” she said. “They are trained to de-escalate situations, not make some worse, not make conflict worse. They are certainly trained to step out of the way of a moving vehicle, not place themselves in the middle of a moving vehicle.

“And no professional law enforcement would, like, exchange words or banter with somebody who is engaged in their legal right to protest and then lose control, which is, you know, which looks to me like what happened here,” she said.