Chipotle Reacts To Woke Misinformation Boycott Threat By Pointing Out Ackman Isn’t Involved
Chipotle stressed that billionaire investor Bill Ackman was not affiliated with the company after a viral social media post falsely claimed he owned the restaurant chain and called for a boycott of his donation to a legal defense fund for an ICE agent involved in the deadly Minneapolis shooting.
“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 owner just gave $10,000 to the man who killed Renee Good.”
Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, disclosed a 9.9% stake in Chipotle in 2016 and the billionaire took an active role in revamping the company’s strategy. But the company reduced its holdings over time before exiting the position completely at the end of 2024, according to disclosures made during the November earnings call.
Set Featured Image The controversy erupted after visitors to a GoFundMe page for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross noticed a $10,000 donation from William Ackman. Ross fatally shot Renee Nicole Good during an immigration enforcement raid in Minneapolis, sparking protests across the country.
Ackman confirmed the donation on social media and explained his reasoning in a lengthy statement released Tuesday. He described his support as rooted in a decades-long commitment to ensuring defendants can afford a legal defense, not as a political statement on immigration enforcement.
“I was simply continuing my long-standing commitment to helping those accused of crimes by providing their defense,” Ackman wrote. “I firmly believe that only a detailed, expert forensic investigation and a thorough understanding of the applicable law will allow us to determine whether Ross is guilty of murder.”
Ackman noted that he gained attention after publicly challenging MBIA’s finances in late 2002, releasing a report titled Is MBIA triple A? after building a bearish position including credit default swaps. MBIA CEO Jay Brown, according to a widely cited account of a November 2002 meeting, warned him that 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 to the test,” describing a roughly six-month investigation that ended without charges. But Ackman’s reputation was damaged, at least temporarily, when the investigations were leaked to the press.
Ackman’s analysis was proven 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 reduce 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 I did not commit. I was sure I had done nothing wrong, but I was found guilty in the headlines. I was under investigation for almost a year before it ended with no finding of wrongdoing, but it was years later before I was exonerated in the public eye,” Ackman said in an article on X.com on Tuesday.
Ackman said his experience led him to become one of the biggest funders of the Innocence Project, which aims to exonerate the wrongly convicted. He said he was currently spending millions to fund the legal fees of two other people accused of wrongdoing.
He also revealed that he tried to donate to the family’s GoFundMe for Good, but found out the company had already closed its doors after reaching its $1.5 million goal.
“It is very unfortunate that we have reached a point in society where we are willing to set aside long-held American principles based on who is accused and what side of the aisle one is on,” Ackman wrote.
The Department of Homeland Security said Good “armed his vehicle” and “attempted to run over a law enforcement officer.” Critics of the Trump administration have loudly insisted that the ICE agent be prosecuted for the shooting. The incident prompted DHS to deploy hundreds of additional ICE agents to Minneapolis and sparked protests by left-wing activists in the city.
