Shortly after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison heard something unusual was happening: Federal agents were not going to share their investigative file with their state counterparts.

“It was at least 24 hours before people started publicly saying it,” Ellison said, declining to outline exactly how he heard about the federal denial, which occurred after an initial agreement for the FBI to work with the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to jointly investigate the shooting. “We started hearing they’re not going to release it. They’re going to exclude state authorities from the bullets, the gun, the crime scene.”

Ellison, who said he has a good relationship with federal law enforcement in his state, tried to intervene. “Can we call somebody? Can we work it out? Can we come to some understanding?” he recalled thinking, in an interview with HuffPost. When the news went public, his hopes dropped. He sent a letter to federal officials pleading with them to change their minds. He hasn’t heard back.

It wasn’t until Friday afternoon, after Ellison and the district attorney for Hennepin County held a press conference and announced they would continue with a parallel investigation, seeking more evidence from the public, that he got confirmation as to why his entreaties to officials he normally works with on a daily basis fell on deaf ears.

“This directive appears to be coming from Trump himself,” Ellison said, pointing to the president’s comments attacking Minnesota law enforcement on Friday.

“Normally I would, but they’re crooked officials,” Trump said when a reporter asked if the FBI should share their files with Minnesota investigators.

The killing is the highest-profile crime Ellison’s office has handled since it successfully prosecuted Minneapolis police for the murder of George Floyd in 2020. One lesson? “Get all the evidence you can,” he said. “Don’t over promise and under deliver.”

While Ellison said he’s doing everything he can to ensure justice is done for Good, the lesson is clearly on his mind. Speaking on Saturday, he repeatedly cautioned that further investigation was needed before a decision could be made on whether to charge ICE agent Jonathan Ross. He also continued to hope the federal government would change its mind.

“I’m appealing to the federal government to reconsider their decision to exclude the state from the evidence,” Ellison said. “We do have the right to investigate.”

He scoffed at Vice President J.D. Vance’s claim that Ross had “absolute immunity,” saying it only reveals his own “ignorance.”

Ellison, who was a longtime member of Congress before he was elected as attorney general in 2018, is not ignorant of the political difficulties. The Trump administration seized on a criminal case alleging fraud by dozens, most of them Somalis, and hyped the claims, then surged thousands of federal agents to Minneapolis — outnumbering the city’s police force by a more than 2:1 margin. The administration has also repeatedly attempted to cut off federal aid, which Ellison’s office has sued to stop.

Even so, he seemed baffled by the apparent release of footage from Ross’s cell phone to Alpha News, a right-wing news outlet in Minnesota. Ellison said it undermined whatever possible justifications the administration used to keep investigative documents away from state officials.

“If you’re not giving up the file, then you’re not giving up the file. But now you are giving up the file,” he said. “It’s fundamentally unprofessional from a criminal justice standpoint, from an investigatory standpoint … if you’re not releasing any information to the state, why are you releasing information to a propaganda sheet like Alpha News with your own commentary?”

The footage, leaked on Friday, shows Ross’s perspective in the moments leading up to his shooting of Good.

“I’m not gonna characterize everything that I see in that video,” he said. “But I will say this: She’s clearly not demonstrating animosity toward him. So when we get down to intent, she’s not saying ‘I’m going to do this to you. I hate you. I’m going to hurt you.’ She’s saying: ‘Hey man, I’m not mad.’”

After he shot her to death, Ross is heard on the video calling Good a “fucking bitch.”

This gets to the second lesson Ellison took from the George Floyd case.

“When some units of government are connected to the death of a person, it’s very predictable for some elements of the government to smear that person’s reputation,” he said. “That’s happening full-on right now.”

“It’s important for the family of Renee Good to know that we know she’s not a domestic terrorist,” he continued. “We know that she’s not. She was a good person, and we know that when she died, she had love in her heart and was expressing no animosity toward the person who killed her and was in the middle of trying to help the most vulnerable neighbors she had.”