After a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis last week, rival GoFundMe campaigns emerged. One raised $1.5 million for the family of the slain mother of three. Another has pulled in nearly half a million dollars for Jonathan Ross — the ICE agent who killed her.
Among the donors to the Ross GoFundMe was billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who shared a post about the fundraiser on Saturday and donated $10,000.
A Facebook page for Clyde Emmons was using an extremist meme as a profile picture.
The fundraising campaign for Ross was created by an account using the name of Clyde Emmons, of Michigan. Other online accounts, linked to the GoFundMe and bearing the same name, posted white supremacist imagery and called Good “a stupod bitch who got what she deserved.”
At the time the GoFundMe page popped up, a Facebook page for Emmons was using an extremist meme as a profile picture. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the image used by the Emmons account depicts a Nazi salute and is a hate symbol. The “paper beats rock” symbol shows a Hitler salute hand over the Black Power fist and is considered an allusion to white supremacy, the ADL says in its explanation of the image.
A screenshot of a Facebook post from an account for Clyde Emmons showing the profile picture at the time the account posted a link to a GoFundMe for ICE agent Jonathan Ross. Screenshot: The Intercept
GoFundMe is investigating the campaign, the company told The Intercept in a statement. (Neither Emmons nor Ackman responded to requests for comment.)
The campaign for Ross has raised over $400K — with Ackman’s donation being the largest to date. On Saturday, Ackman shared a right-wing influencer’s post about the fundraiser for Ross, and around the same time, a $10,000 donation from “William Ackman” appeared on the page.
In a Sunday post on X, Ackman confirmed that he made the donation, saying he wanted to also donate to the fundraiser for Good but it was closed by the time he went to give.
“The whole situation is a tragedy,” he wrote. “An officer doing his best to do his job, and a protester who likely did not intend to kill the officer but whose actions in a split second led to her death.”
A Friday post to a Facebook page identified as belonging to Emmons gave a very different explanation for starting the GoFundMe.
“The stupid cunts wanna make a go fund me for the stupod bitch that got what she deserved,” said the since-edited post, which linked to the Ross campaign. “i made one for the ice officer that did his job lets get this man some money.”
When Ackman donated to the campaign for Ross, the description included a reference to Ross’s legal fees.