Becca and Renee Good Were Not Married. So Why Does Everyone Keep Lying About It?

Even after a lawyer representing Becca Good confirmed the pair were not married, news outlets and social media influencers refuse to correct the inaccurate portrayal of a "bereaved widow."

Following the anti-Trump resistance fashion of resigning from the Department of Justice as a sign of protest against their higher-ups and the president, six prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota quit earlier this week rather than pursue an inquiry into the woman described as the “widow” of Renee Good, the anti-ICE activist shot and killed on January 7.

One of the departing lawyers, Joseph Thompson, had led the office’s multi-billion dollar fraud investigation into several Medicaid-funded organizations in Minnesota. But he left his post on Tuesday—not before allowing a New York Times photographer into his government office for a photo shoot, it appears—rather than follow orders to do his job. “Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good,” the Times reported on Jan. 13. “Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful.”

But if Thompson and his colleagues indeed resigned over plans to investigate Good’s “widow,” they may soon regret their decision. (Or not. Either way, good riddance.) An attorney representing Renee Good’s estate acknowledged in an interview with the Washington Post that Becca Good was not her wife. Antonio Romanucci, the Chicago-based attorney who also represented the family of George Floyd and succeeded in winning a $27 million settlement for the Floyd family, said Renee’s “partner, parents and four siblings want ‘to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America.” Romanucci further confirmed the pair “were not married.”

On Friday, just a few days after publishing the story about Thompson, the Times had to admit in a separate story that Becca and Renee “were not legally married.” But a review of Times articles published since the shooting does not show that the paper has corrected any previous articles describing Becca Good as the “wife” or “widow” of Renee Good.

Ditto for the Washington Post. Despite being the first corporate media outlet to disclose the Goods’ nonexistent marriage, this Jan. 9 headlines and article remains in tact without a correction:

In fact, reporters, social media influencers, and politicians continue to describe Becca Good as the wife of Renee; that initial misrepresentation came from Becca Good herself, who not only screamed out after the shooting that Renee was “her wife,” but also described Renee as “my wife” in a statement released to the media on Jan. 9. But rather than bothering to fact-check Becca Good’s claims, everyone including talking heads on Fox News parroted that definition:

Sticking with the lie that Renee and Becca were married is a critical part of the overall false narrative about the pair and their actions that day. The narrative goes like this: a happy lesbian married couple had just dropped their young son off at school when they just happened upon an ICE operation in their community so they exercised their First Amendment rights at that moment to express their displeasure with illegal immigrant removals.

Why Tell the Truth When the Lies Sound So Much Nicer?

But every facet of that sympathy-promoting hagiography is untrue. Not only were the Goods unmarried, the six-year-old son belonged to Renee only. (His father, Renee’s second husband, died in 2023.) The pair relocated to Minneapolis just last March, hardly qualifying as their “community.” In 2023, as I posted here, Renee Good successfully petitioned to change her last name to Good; it was not a result of marriage.

And Becca Good is tied to an anti-ICE activist group, which had held a remote training seminar just a few days before the confrontation.

Romanucci also refuses to acknowledge their involvement in anti-ICE activism. In the Times interview, Romanucci “declined to say whether the couple had been alerted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents might be working on the block where they encountered them” and also refused to say “whether Renee Good had joined a neighborhood group chat that tracked agents, attended any training sessions about watching ICE, or observed immigration agents before that morning of the shooting.”

So in other words—yes.

Show Her the Money

Some may argue the legal status of their relationship is inconsequential. “Who cares if they were married or not?” But if it doesn’t matter from a reporting/posting standpoint, why not just use the proper term for Becca Good, which is “partner?”

From a legal standpoint, with millions of dollars potentially at stake, the distinction absolutely matters. A GoFundMe account raised $1.5 million in just two days before donations were paused on Jan. 9 and money moved to a trust on behalf of Renee Good’s “widow and family.” The site lists Becca Good as the sole “beneficiary.”

Romanucci appears to represent Becca Good in addition to Renee’s parents and siblings, however, her right to the GoFundMe contributions or proceeds from a lawsuit settlement is murky. The city of Minneapolis offers a “domestic partnership registration affidavit” that then confers to the couple many of the same rights as a married couple. But it is unclear whether Becca and Renee completed the registry. Even if they did, a bigger question remains as to whether that is a sufficient basis to entitle Becca Good to any monies related to Renee Good’s death under broader state law. (My guess is the existing comity between Becca Good and Renee’s blood relatives won’t last long as fights over money ensue.)

None of these questions or nitpicky details appear to interest those covering the shooting and subsequent protests. The corporate media are too invested in the narrative, using it as a cudgel against the Trump administration and perpetuating the falsehood that innocent families are being put in danger by federal law enforcement. Once again, the media and their foot soldiers on social media and in the Democratic Party would rather ignore the facts than admit error if there’s a slight chance it helps the president.