Chipotle pointed out that billionaire investor Bill Ackman is not affiliated with the company after a viral social media post falsely claimed he owned the restaurant chain and called for a boycott over his donation to a legal defense fund for an ICE agent involved in the fatal shooting in Minneapolis.
“Bill Ackman is not affiliated with Chipotle,” the company posted on Threads in response to a post that urged, “Don’t eat at Chipotle. The guy who owns it just gave $10000 to the man who killed Renee Good.”
Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, disclosed a 9.9 percent stake in Chipotle in 2016 and the billionaire took an active role in overhauling the company’s strategy. But the firm reduced its holdings over time before exiting the position entirely in late 2024, according to disclosures made during a November earnings call.
The controversy erupted after visitors to a GoFundMe page for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Jonathan Ross noticed a $10,000 donation from William Ackman. Ross fatally shot Renee Nicole Good during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, sparking protests around the country.
Ackman confirmed the donation on social media and explained his reasoning in a lengthy statement posted Tuesday. He described his support as rooted in a decades-long commitment to ensuring accused individuals can afford legal defense, not as a political statement about immigration enforcement.
“I was simply continuing my longstanding commitment to assisting those accused of crimes of providing for their defense,” Ackman wrote. “I strongly believe that only a detailed forensic investigation by experts and a deep understanding of the law that applies will enable us to determine whether Ross is guilty of murder.”
Ackman pointed out that he drew scrutiny after he publicly challenged MBIA’s finances in late 2002, releasing a report titled Is MBIA Triple A? after building a bearish position that included credit-default swaps. MBIA CEO Jay Brown, according to a widely cited account of a November 2002 meeting, warned him the company had “friends in high places,” an obvious attempt to intimidate Ackman from criticizing the company.
After MBIA accused Ackman of trying to drive down the stock, the SEC and then–New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer began investigating in 2003. Spitzer later said, “we put him through the wringer,” describing a roughly six-month probe that ended with no charges. But Ackman’s reputation was damaged, at least temporarily, when the investigations leaked to the press.
Ackman’s analysis proved correct when MBIA was downgraded from AAA to junk status during the financial crisis. The downgrade and financial damage forced MBIA to stop writing new insurance and shrink its payroll from 500 employees to 57. It saw its insured portfolio collapse from $841 billion to $26 billion.
“Twenty-three years ago almost to the day, I was accused of a crime that I did not commit. I was confident that I had done nothing wrong, but I was convicted in the headlines. I was under investigation for nearly a year before it ended without any finding of wrongdoing, but it would be years later before I was exonerated in the public eye,” Ackman said in a post on X.com on Tuesday.
Ackman said that experience led him to become one of the largest funders of the Innocence Project, which works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted. He said he is currently spending millions funding legal costs for two other people accused of wrongdoing.
He also disclosed that he attempted to donate to the GoFundMe for Good’s family but found it had already closed after reaching its $1.5 million goal.
“It is very unfortunate that we have reached a stage in society where we are prepared to toss aside longstanding American principles depending on who is accused and on what side of the aisle one sits,” Ackman wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security has said that Good “weaponized her vehicle” and “attempted to run a law enforcement officer over.” Critics of the Trump administration have loudly insisted that the ICE agent should face prosecution for the shooting. The incident has prompted DHS to deploy hundreds of additional ICE agents to Minneapolis and given rise to protests by left-wing activists in the city.
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