by Steve Timmer

Jan 18, 2026, 12:00 PM

Joe Thompson discovers there is some shit he will not eat

He did eat some shit, though!

Joe Thompson probably surprised even himself when he resigned from his position as the first deputy assistant United States attorney last week, along with some colleagues. After all, he’d been a go-along to get-along kind of a guy since the beginning of the Trump administration. Readers will recall that Thompson was Acting United States Attorney for most of 2025, reporting directly to the attorney general, Pamela Jo Bondi.

In June, undoubtedly at the behest of Pamela Jo, he bigfooted the Hennepin County Attorney in probably the most important murder prosecution of the year, after the political assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and the attempted assassination of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. I wrote a letter about that; it was printed in the Minnesota Star Tribune on July 2nd. I also wrote a LeftMN story that reprints the letter with some updates.

The Hennepin County Attorney’s office had already filed charged against the killer, Vance Boelter, in a case where transparency and assurance that an understanding of the character of the defendant and his conduct are important to the citizens of Hennepin County and the entire state. The county attorney has many more seasoned violent felony prosecutors than the United States attorney’s office does. The county attorney handles an order of magnitude more murder and other violent offender cases. I hope you will read the LeftMN story at the link above; I’ll repeat just a couple of points from it.

I expressed concern that Boelter’s politics, his MAGAness and christian (I don’t capitalize it here, because it isn’t really a religion in this context) nationalism would be minimized. Boelter texted his family on the morning of the shootings, after all, writing that he “had gone to war.” It doesn’t appear that federal prosecutors are keen on figuring out who Boelter went to war for. Here’s the last update to the story (there were a few):

Update 8/9/25: Remember a couple of updates ago where Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said that trying to figure out Vance Boelter’s motive was difficult? According to Substacker Ken Klippenstein, speaking on Molly Jong Fast’s podcast on August 9th, the feds are adopting a new category for crime statistics called ‘nihilistic violent extremist.’ It would replace more specific categories like ‘neo-Nazi.’ [or MAGA, or anti-abortion extremist, or christian nationalist]

As Klippenstein observed, it drains the politics out of it. Why would the administration want to do that?

Do you imagine that Vance Boelter will be characterized by Joe Thompson’s office as a ‘nihilistic violent extremist,’ rather than what he is: a christian nationalist and ulta-MAGA adherent?

I imagine so.

But it is all nothing compared to Joe Thompson’s press conference on December 18, 2025, where he said this:

Federal prosecutors announced new charges Thursday as they continue to investigate a massive fraud crisis across Minnesota’s social services programs, adding that 14 Medicaid-funded programs have cost $18 billion since 2018, more than half of which they suspect is fraud. [emphasis added]

“Every day we look under a rock and find a new $50 million fraud scheme,” First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson said. “The magnitude of the fraud in Minnesota cannot be overstated. Staggering amounts of money have been lost.”

Thompson couldn’t cite specifics [emphasis added] on how much of the $18 billion is fraudulent, saying “the answer is far too much.”

Joe Thompson has proven in court the smallest sliver of $9 billion. The speculation and odious pretrial publicity in Thompson’s remarks are breathtaking. That they were delivered, laying them at the feet of Minnesota’s Somali community, while flanked by seven (7) (that’s how lawyers write it) white office apparatchiks — words fail me. Well, two words don’t fail me: racist and xenophobic.

The tableau above’s only nod to diversity is one (1) white woman.

Pandemic and Medicaid fraud has occurred across the country, and it is no respecter of racial lines. We know this because we read about the white fraudsters — and notorious drug traffickers, too — whom Donald Trump has pardoned or commuted.

Lawyers would also say that Thompson’s $9 billion fraud remarks were without foundation. If he’d tried to offer them in court, he’d have been slapped, with justification, by a judge.

I think Thompson’s remarks violated at least two (2) — there I go again — of the rules that govern the conduct of lawyers and prosecutors in Minnesota: Rules 3.6 and 3.8 of the Rules of Professional Conduct. Calling defendants “fraud tourists” is odious pretrial publicity and the kind of thing that gets cases dismissed.

I’ve been a lawyer for fifty (50) — I can’t stop — years, and I can’t recall anything like this in Minnesota. The presser was shameful, start to finish. Thor Anderson (a long time Minnesota United States Attorney) is spinning in his grave. What possessed Joe Thompson to call this presser?

Well, it isn’t what; it’s who: Pamela Jo Bondi.

It is all of a piece with other expressions of Donald Trump’s animus toward Minnesota: a state that voted against him three times, a governor who was his adversary in the 2024 election, and a state that champions abortion and LGBT+ rights. It drives Donald Trump nuts. Therefore, it drives Pamela Jo nuts and Joe Thompson has to be driven nuts, too. It really is that simple.

A month of right-wing social media bloviating, a mainstream media that ran with the nine billion figure as a fact, Donald Trump’s ranting that Somalis people are “garbage,” Nick Shirley’s puerile, defamatory video (extolled by the Ovoid Sorehead, Tom Emmer), Tim Walz being driven from a re-election campaign, the fact that Somali and Latino U.S. citizens have to cower in their homes, and the sad little bullshit performance in Minneapolis by Jake Lang on Saturday, January 17th, can all be laid at the feet of Joe Thompson. It’s quite a legacy.

It all came to a sad and inglorious end when one of the ICE orcs in Minnesota shot and killed a mother of three — the friendly and pacific Renee Nicole Good — while the killer filmed the event for posterity. Pamela Jo’s Justice Department wants to pave the whole thing over: not investigate the ICE orc, Jonathan Ross, and investigate Renee Good’s wife and neighbors for being a nest of subversives.

This was too much even for the stalwart Joe Thompson. He quit.

But virginity is a tough thing to recover. When you’re tempted to lionize Thompson for resigning, remember his role in creating the shitshow to begin with.

This Kafka farce isn’t even over. Now the Justice Department, with a slightly trimmed staff, is investigating Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey for obstruction of justice.

-Steve