An attorney general whose state faces higher violent crime rates since he took office has devoted significant attention to suing the Trump administration, critics told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has sued President Donald Trump, his officials and agencies 23 times since Inauguration Day over hot-button political issues, according to press releases from his office. The sheer volume of cases has led some in the state to believe that Ellison is putting a partisan agenda above helping local prosecutors curb violent crime.
“It’s difficult to keep up with the flurry of lawsuits coming from our Attorney General’s Office — all designed to oppose the president’s agenda,” said David Zimmer, a former law enforcement officer who researches public safety for the Minnesota-based Center of the American Experiment.
“What Minnesota needs is an attorney general laser focused on sending a strong message to criminals in our state,” Zimmer told the DCNF. “Instead, we have an attorney general focused on sending politically motivated messages to our duly elected President.”
Ellison’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF.
The attorney general’s 23 lawsuits challenging the Trump administration touch on transgenderism in schools, federal funding cuts, immigration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) among other matters. Ellison’s office has also filed six legal briefs in court opposing aspects of Trump’s agenda, and others arguing against conservative policy efforts around the country.
“Democrat attorneys general like Keith Ellison are using judicial warfare to block the President’s agenda,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told the DCNF. “Keith Ellison should spend more time upholding law and order for everyday Minnesotans than playing politics with the Trump Administration.”
Ellison boasted about his mounting legal battles against the administration in an April Substack post.
“So far, I’ve sued this Trump administration eleven times — though at the rate he’s breaking laws, even that number might be out of date by the time you read this,” Ellison said. “And of those eleven cases, we’ve lost precisely zero.”
Zimmer said that Ellison’s political priorities take attention away from urgent public safety concerns. “Minnesotans remain burdened with violent crime rates that remain far above the pre-civil unrest of 2020,” he told the DCNF, referring to the mass protests in response to the death of George Floyd, which occurred while he was in Minneapolis police custody.
While local prosecutors are primarily responsible for enforcing laws in their districts, attorneys general represent the state’s interests in court, which can include assisting in the prosecution of local crimes, as Ellison has done on occasion.
After Ellison took office in January 2019, his state’s violent crime rate jumped by 16.6% in 2020 and another 22% in 2021, state statistics show. The rate decreased in 2022 and 2023, but has not yet reached pre-2020 levels.
The number of homicides in Minneapolis, the state’s most populous city, also increased by four in 2024 compared to the year prior, with 28 more reported than in 2019, according to the Minnesota Reformer.
“Despite political and media efforts to suggest Minnesota has experienced dramatic decreases in crime, those decreases are only realized in the context of comparing them to the huge spikes in crime following the ‘uprising’ of 2020,” Zimmer said.
Ellison showed support for the Black Lives Matter “message of justice” in 2020, though he said that rioters and looters threatened to “distort” the cause. Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz also faced criticism for hesitating to bring in the National Guard, which allowed the mobs of protesters to cause massive property damage to Minneapolis.
In an April report, Zimmer analyzed early statewide data for 2024 and previous years — along with incarceration rates — and said that the policies of leftist prosecutors such as Ellison likely exacerbated violent crime by letting many offenders avoid jail.
Statistics show Minnesota suffering the effects of higher violent crime rates from 2020 to 2024. (Image courtesy of the Center of the American Experiment)
Ellison has long been an opponent of “mass incarceration,” both while he has served as attorney general and during his time as a U.S. representative. Incarceration rates in his state have followed suit.
Minnesota’s adult prison population was 8,277 as of January 2025, down from 9,479 the month that Ellison’s term began. The number fell by 1,788 inmates in 2020 alone, even with the wave of riots stemming from the Black Lives Matter and “defund the police” movements that same year.
“Prosecutors like Keith Ellison have failed at the most basic function of law enforcement: keeping our communities safe,” Alliance for Consumers Executive Director O.H. Skinner told the DCNF.
The legal expert said that the “elites in Minnesota are focused on pursuing a far-left agenda and raising their national profile, while “consumers are suffering from rampant crime.”
Ellison maintained that his Trump-related court cases are “not a partisan thing” in an April video.
“In Minnesota, we’re working every day to uphold the law, to make sure that nobody’s above the law,” the attorney general said.
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