A recent move by the Trump administration effectively killed an office in Minnesota responsible for investigating wrongful convictions.

The news comes as Donald Trump, the first convicted felon to assume the presidency, wages a campaign to persecute and prosecute his perceived enemies. Trump has made a mockery of the American justice system by pardoning scores of criminals aligned with him — including several who have gone on to be convicted of sexual abuse — while simultaneously using federal law enforcement to investigate people he doesn’t like.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Wednesday that the Trump administration has refused to renew a federal grant used by his office to address possible wrongful convictions, adding in a statement:

Following the Trump Administration’s refusal to renew federal grant funding that supported the program, my Office is suspending our Conviction Review Unit. Current budget constraints do not allow the program’s costs to be absorbed without compromising other core responsibilities.

Just last year, an independent auditor praised our CRU as a “model for how statewide conviction integrity work should be done.” It is disappointing that our federal government has decided to deprioritize identifying and correcting wrongful convictions.

This is just the latest example of how Trump’s campaign rhetoric is at odds with his actual behavior as president. You may remember that Trump, while falsely portraying himself as a martyr in the 2024 race, made the bigoted suggestion that “the Black people” were supporting him because they could supposedly relate to his multiple criminal indictments. (For the record, I debunked this mythical claim of Black support after the election.)

In other words, Trump framed himself as a spokesman, if not an outright savior, for people who have been unjustly targeted by law enforcement — and then gutted a key means by which people who have actually been wrongly convicted can receive justice.

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