Attorney General Ellison’s statement on DHS surveillance of Minnesota protesters
August 14, 2026 (SAINT PAUL) — Today, Attorney General Keith Ellison released the following statement in response to recent reporting on the Department of Homeland Security’s surveillance of protesters in Minnesota:
“The Trump administration’s extensive surveillance of Minnesotans for exercising their constitutionally protected, basic First Amendment rights to protest and hold their government accountable is appalling and alarming.
“What it’s not is surprising. Trump has shown over and over he believes the federal government exists primarily to investigate, prosecute, and retaliate against his political enemies. America was founded on righteous protest and Trump’s retaliation against it is fundamentally anti-American.
“If Trump can't handle peaceful, constitutional protests, his agents shouldn't have abused their power, violated our rights, and shot two Minnesotans dead during Metro Surge.”
Reports of the extensive surveillance operations, dubbed Operation Puppet Master and Project Whipple Shield, emerged a month and a half after the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota shut down another invasive abuse of the criminal justice system from the Trump administration. On June 22, 2026, the court unsealed an order quashing criminal subpoenas from the Department of Justice that targeted Attorney General Ellison, Governor Walz, and other Minnesota elected officials.
The court found the criminal subpoenas were acts of political retaliation and observed that the DOJ “struggled - without success - to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas.” The court excoriated the DOJ throughout its ruling, writing at one point:
“Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action-particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take-is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use the grand-jury process. The only question, then, is whether the challenged subpoenas were issued for one of these forbidden purposes.
“The Court has no doubt that they were. On the one hand, the evidence that the challenged subpoenas were issued for unlawful reasons is overwhelming. On the other hand, the Department has struggled-without success-to identify a single plausible investigatory justification for the subpoenas.”
The court went on to sharply criticize the DOJ for “launching a sweeping investigation into nearly the entire political structure of a sovereign state” without identifying a single instance of unlawful conduct. The court order quashing the subpoenas is available here.
