Federal Agents Under Scrutiny After Pretti Killing

Summary

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Podcast Summary

The Beat with Ari Melber – “Federal Agents Under Scrutiny After Pretti Killing”
Date: January 27, 2026
Host: Ari Melber
Guests: Andrew Weissman (Former DOJ, FBI), Mark Claxton (Ret. NYPD), Bill Kristol (The Bulwark)

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Episode Overview

Ari Melber delivers in-depth analysis and reporting on the high-profile killing of Alex Preddy, an ICU nurse, by federal agents in Minnesota. The episode examines the fallout from the incident, the Trump administration's response, legal and ethical questions, mounting protests, and the broader implications for law enforcement, civil liberties, and government accountability. Key guests provide legal, policing, and political context, challenging the administration’s narrative and questioning the policy roots of escalating violence by federal agents.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Immediate Fallout and Administration Response

• Personnel Change:

  • Controversial Customs and Border Patrol official Greg Bevino is removed from Minnesota amid public and political outcry, widely seen as a "vote of no confidence."
    • [01:22] Ari: "The Journal reporting he'd emerged as the public face of Trump's immigration enforcement activity in the state…this is widely interpreted as a vote of no confidence."

• Administration’s Shifting Narrative:

  • Initial claims by officials that Preddy intended to "massacre law enforcement" are directly contradicted by video evidence.
  • Despite personnel shifts, administration policy remains unchanged and just as aggressive.
  • The Trump team continues rotating hardline officials (e.g., Tom Homan being sent in), signifying only cosmetic changes.
  • Removal of Bevino is seen by Melber as proof that public pressure can work, but without meaningful policy change.
    • [03:00] Ari: “Ousting Bovino suggests that pressure can also work. It’s a step towards some kind of change or accountability with who's doing what. But the policy, as best we can tell, remains unchanged.”

• Protests and Public Fear:

  • Ongoing protests despite dangerous conditions highlight public resistance and fear of further violence.
    • [02:11] Ari: “It is understandable that some people would view even going outside to use their First Amendment rights…as itself potentially dangerous. And yet there they are being seen and heard around the country.”

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2. Legal and Policy Critique

• Question of Legality and Accountability:

  • Multiple officials and legal experts stress that, by any standard, the death of a restrained individual by multiple gunshots mandates a homicide investigation.
    • [07:17] Ari: “An American citizen was grabbed, restrained, held down…then shot 10 times to death. That's when you definitely open a homicide investigation.”

• State Pushback and DOJ Scandal:

  • Minnesota is suing DHS, calling deployments “an illegal means to an illegal end.”
    • [07:52] Ari: “…rebuking these types of DHS deployments and the recent killing as a, ‘illegal means to an illegal end.’”
  • DOJ (Attorney General Bondi) attempts to coerce local election rolls via threat of armed agent deployment, a tactic described as unprecedented and a “ransom.”
    • [08:26] Ari: “There is no precedent for the federal government offering to use or withhold armed federal agents in order to get voter rolls.”

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3. Republican and Media Reactions

• Bipartisan Outrage:

  • Even Republican officials and the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal are openly criticizing the administration.
    • [09:40] Ari: “The Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal…noting people don’t believe the spin. And on politics, the Journal says, ‘this is backfiring against Republicans. Americans don’t want to see law enforcement shooting people in the street.’”

• Failure to Acknowledge Wrongdoing:

  • Despite spinning the story, the administration has yet to acknowledge any error or express empathy.

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4. Expert Analysis: Policing, Policy, and Escalation

Andrew Weissman (DOJ, FBI) on Policy Causation

• Root Cause is Trump’s Policy:

  • Policy, not personnel, is the driver of violent escalation.
    • [14:04] Weissman: “What we are seeing…is a result of the policy of Donald Trump…You really can’t just, you know, put lipstick on a pig and say, it has nothing to do with me. And so changing around who is there in Minnesota is not changing the policies.”

• Investigative Failures:

  • Lack of impartial investigations after shootings sends message that agents have total immunity.
    • [16:21] Weissman: “The first thing…you have an investigation and you have an impartial investigation and you don’t … announce the conclusion before the investigation.”

• Dehumanizing and Dangerous Agent Culture:

  • Militarized ICE is unaccountable and emboldened, unlike regular police who de-escalate.
    • [20:26] Weissman: “If you create ICE as a model of sort…where you're telling people they have unfettered power and nothing’s going to change that…that is what results in…officers who are really not doing what many, many law enforcement officers…do day in and day out.”

• Contrast with Minneapolis Police:

  • Minneapolis PD made hundreds of arrests and removed 900 guns in a year without a single shot fired.
    • [23:34]/[23:45] Mark Claxton/Ari: “The Minneapolis Police Department…about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders. – And we didn’t shoot anyone.”

Mark Claxton (Black Law Enforcement Alliance) on Policing Tactics

• Policy and Training Breakdown:

  • Deploying agents without crowd control or civilian engagement training is a “recipe for disaster.”
    • [29:53] Claxton: “What I see is really a bastardization of professional law enforcement…corruption of any criminal investigation… the mission itself is unwieldy and unclear and dysfunctional.”

• Militarization Escalates Violence:

  • Militarized uniforms and lack of empathy drive escalation.
    • [31:44] Claxton: “It starts really…with…that militarized attire. It’s just peculiar that…part of what was labeled a reform movement…was to de- militarize law enforcement…Now we’ve really doubled down on the militarization.”

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5. Broader Political and Constitutional Crisis

Bill Kristol’s Warning

• Foreseeable Outcome:

  • The repeated abuses and killings are prefigured by years of top-level encouragement and lack of consequences.
    • [37:31] Kristol: “To see them lie about it and justify it and smear and slander this 37-year-old VA nurse who clearly did nothing wrong…and they’ve apologized for none of the lies…And they're going ahead with the whole mass deportation effort, which is what has produced this.”

• Dangerous Culture and Immunity:

  • Administration messages signal immunity for violence—agents are protected to the top (even against local prosecution).
    • [40:33] Kristol: “This is the culture they’ve imparted…They’ve not penalized anyone…they’ve lauded agents who’ve done these things…if they really think there’ll be consequences, they might back off. But if they're protected to the top…the President…who has pardon power…Well, what does that do? It just tells people…you’ll pay no consequence. Super dangerous.”

Ari Melber’s Broader Reflections

• Constitutional Peril:
  • Drawing parallels to Orwellian dystopia; warnings of unchecked abuse of power.
    • [35:35] Ari: “Militarized agents shooting down Americans dead in the street in broad daylight…Don't believe what you see with your own eyes. Orwell’s 1984 has exactly such claims as a dystopian warning.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ari Melber [07:17]:
  “An American citizen was grabbed, restrained, held down…then shot 10 times to death. That's when you definitely open a homicide investigation.”

• Andrew Weissman [14:04]:
  “What we are seeing in Minnesota…is a result of the policy of Donald Trump. You really can’t just put lipstick on a pig and say, it has nothing to do with me.”

• Mark Claxton [23:45]:
  “And we didn’t shoot anyone.” (on Minneapolis Police Department's record).

• Bill Kristol [37:31]:
  “To see them lie about it and justify it and smear and slander this 37-year-old VA nurse who clearly did nothing wrong. And even if he did something wrong, he doesn't deserve to be murdered.”

• Ari Melber [35:35]:
  “Militarized agents shooting down Americans dead in the street in broad daylight…Well, now we see the abusive power up close.”

• Andrew Weissman [36:43]:
  "Please watch what's happening here. I feel like we're performing CPR on what may already be a corpse called the Constitution."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:00] – Ari Melber opens with breaking news, significance of personnel change, and summary of incident.
• [03:00] – Discussion of administration's response and possible policy shifts.
• [07:17] – Call for homicide investigation; explanation of legal standards.
• [13:55] – Andrew Weissman's policy analysis begins.
• [14:04] – Weissman: "This is a result of the policy of Donald Trump."
• [18:00–20:30] – Weissman on ICE culture, lack of investigation, and Minneapolis police comparison.
• [23:45] – Mark Claxton: “And we didn’t shoot anyone.”
• [29:53–33:41] – Claxton on policing tactics and failures.
• [35:35] – Ari Melber draws broader political and constitutional implications.
• [37:31] – Kristol on the top-down culture of impunity.
• [40:22] – Kristol on dangerous incentive structure and immunity.
• [43:06–44:35] – Tributes to Alex Preddy as a nurse, veteran helper, and community member.

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In Memoriam: Alex Preddy

• [43:06]
  Ari Melber shares footage and words honoring Preddy’s final acts: “Today we remember that freedom is not free. You have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it… we render our honor and our gratitude.”

• [44:07]
  Weissman and others recount Preddy’s empathy, dedication, and selflessness: “He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States.”

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode lays bare the human cost and political stakes of Trump administration immigration policing, underscoring a profound constitutional crisis. Guests challenge the effectiveness of merely shifting personnel and call for urgent accountability, transparency, and policy change as civilian casualties mount. The tragedy of Alex Preddy becomes a rallying point for rethinking enforcement tactics, the militarization of federal agencies, and the very meaning of justice under the law.

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Transcript

[Andrew Weissman]

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[Host/Anchor]

Welcome to the beat everyone. I'm Ari Melbourne. We're reporting amid the fallout of another killing of an American by federal agents working under the Trump administration's obviously unusual, many say unprecedented in the modern era and to be clear, possibly unlawful deployment of these different types of DHS and ICE agents in Minnesota. The new shooting of this nurse, Alex Preddy, which involved several shots to the back while he was already restrained, according to the video showing it in real and later reported analysis, that shooting is stoking grave legal questions and pushback from Congress and I'll show you that tonight. We begin with the very latest, though, a personnel change by the Trump administration in Minnesota. The top controversial chief involved in much of this, a Customs and Border Patrol official named Greg Bevino, is, according to the Wall Street Journal's new reporting, crossing late today, leaving Minnesota immediately, the Journal reporting he'd emerged as the public face of Trump's immigration enforcement activity in the state. He'd accompanied agents on operations and this is widely interpreted as a vote of no confidence in what he's done recently, if not overall. Pavino was an official who had claimed prior to any fact finding that he thought Preddy wanted maximum damage and to massacre law enforcement. To be clear, these are the kind of statements that if a random person made them about another person in America, you could easily end up in a defamation case. This, of course, coming with the authority of the federal government. And the videos flatly contradicted that. So unless we got more fact finding or new reporting, it would already seem to be a false statement. Whether it was made recklessly or knowingly would be the legal standard. The shooting, though, continues to spark protests around the whole area. This is despite freezing temperatures. We're seeing this show of force. And as has been demonstrated now, with two different people who were basically protesting or peacefully observing officers now being killed, it is understandable that some people would view even going outside to use their First Amendment rights against the Trump administration right now as itself potentially dangerous. And yet there they are being seen and heard around the country. Now, I will mention in terms of following each development that the president posted online today about what he tried to describe as a positive call with Governor Tim Walz, that is a different tone than Trump has taken towards Walls and other Minnesota officials recently. And this other change that I just told you about, yanking this official from Minnesota, is an effort to put a different face on what they've been doing than what's been happening. So that includes Bavino, who I mentioned, or DHS chief Kristi Noem. Because at that level of the more public leadership officials, Trump has now sent Tom Homan to Minnesota to play a kind of more active role. The Times reporting on that. So when you look at Pavino's departure, when you look at turning the volume down on Nome and this sending of the borders are there, you have an administration that is losing something and they are trying to change something about at least how it's viewed in response. And Noem has been criticized for aggressive and misleading statements amid both of these shootings of Americans. But in this administration, Trump shifting roles around among different leaders at DHS or immigration enforcement will only involve rotating among roughly equally hardline individuals. Because unlike, say, the famed war of rivals cabinet or having different people bounce off each other that we've seen in other cabinets in both parties, immigration, the second term is all hardliners. So there isn't a balanced or smart on deportation voice among the incumbent members of leadership for Trump to turn to. And so that matters tonight because even as we can report on the pressure getting to Trump in an effort to change the face, it is still the policy, the tactics and the violence against the public that goes forward. Homan has been strict and strident about the Trump deportation agenda, defending the use of force, defending agents, doing just about anything that was clear definitely the last time he appeared on this very program. And for The Record, we've invited him and other immigration officials back to join us anytime this week so that we can discuss factually and journalistically all of these important issues. Now, ousting Bovino suggests that pressure can also work. It's a step towards some kind of change or accountability with who's doing what. But the policy, as best we can tell, remains unchanged. The president is using what are executive authorities, which means unlike some debate over a law, anytime this president could say, instead of sending Homan in or pulling someone else out, he could say, looking at this type of loss of life, we are pausing this plan, we are pulling people back, or we're pausing this policy for a week. We don't have news like that to report on, not yet, anyway. And the Trump agenda continues to deploy what is at minimum, an unusually aggressive level of force for what our documentation and ICE patrols, what at maximum may be under investigation for the potential homicide or murder of American citizens. That has to be investigated. But unlike the many situations where we cover use of force and you say it looks like what in policing, we call a good shot, or you get to a situation where you say this was a tough, tragic situation, but there's not an investigation being open, then you have another bucket where you definitely open an investigation because of potential misuse of force. And then you have where we are tonight, where an American citizen was grabbed, restrained, held down, as the New York Times put it, and then shot 10 times to death. That's when you definitely open a homicide investigation. And I have more on that aspect of it later tonight. Now, I want to continue with the latest because whether the wider policy that I mentioned is actually changed may depend on other forces intervening. And that's also big news today, where Minnesota officials use their authority to go to court demanding that this stop, quote, just end it, end the whole thing, said the lawyer for these Minnesota officials. And rebuking these types of DHS deployments and the recent killing as a, quote, illegal means to an illegal end. That's the Minnesota attorney suing dhs, which is why, you see Minnesota versus Kristi Noem. Attorney General Bondi, meanwhile, has been caught doing something that on its own would be a giant scandal, full stop, even if she doesn't pull it off, which is she has admitted that they at the DOJ and under the Trump administration want to invoke federal powers to force or extort material from Minnesota relating to elections. And you might say, well, what does valid ICE enforcement have to do with local authority over elections? And the answer is nothing. Nothing valid. Here, sometimes we tell you stories that have two or more sides. This isn't one of those stories. And there is no precedent for the federal government offering to use or withhold armed federal agents in order to get voter rolls. So a judge is now reviewing this sort of electoral angle from Trump's DOJ to assess the Minnesota objection that Bondi is trying to pull off a shakedown, a ransom. So that is also being reviewed in the court process. There's the probe of the killing itself, whether that will be independent and credible. More on that later tonight in this program. But I also want to make sure you see this, and you need to see it with your own eyes. The latest pushback from different Republican officials, some in D.C. some on the ground elsewhere with these concerns. If I were President Trump, I would almost think about, okay, if the mayor and the governor are going to put our ICE officials in harm's way and.

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Know, innocent lives or whatever, then maybe go to another city. So I would encourage the administration to be more measured, to recognize the tragedy and to say, we don't want anyone, anyone's lives to be lost. I think the death of Americans, what we're seeing on tv, it's causing deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability. Americans don't like what they're seeing right now. Americans don't like what they're seeing. That Republican official referring to federal agents shooting Americans twice in three weeks on video where people can see exactly how it was, at a minimum, a poorly trained, unnecessary taking of an American life and at maximum, under investigation, a question of whether or not this was a homicide. No, people don't like that. And this is where we are in 2026 with everything that's happened that it takes Ted Cruz and these other Republicans to publicly have to remind the administration killing Americans for next to no reason or no reason at all bad. Those reactions are based on what's known from the video and the reporting. And that also means there has been a failure by the Trump administration to do what it has sometimes effectively done to spin, confuse or lie to people. And our job here is to tell you what's really happening. The Trump administration has had officials, one now yanked out of Minnesota who responded to these tragic killings of Americans with falsehood, spin and sometimes outright lies. Here's how the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal put it. They rebuked this moral and political debacle by the Trump administration, noting people don't believe the spin. And on politics, the Murdoch owned Journal says, quote, this is backfiring against Republicans. Americans don't want to see law enforcement shooting people in the street. Now you'll notice the common theme here. We are at a point where it takes Republicans in public after whatever they tried to say in private or meekly to Trump's aides and officials, and he is gettable by phone. He is that kind of president. People reach him more than some other ones. Whatever they said in private didn't work. So you have Republicans in public saying shooting Americans is bad. You have the Wall Street Journal saying shooting Americans is bad. You have now the Trump administration saying, hey, we're trying to work with walls. We're pulling these other people back. But they have yet to even verbally get to the point to agree shooting Americans is bad. Acknowledging that and perhaps some baseline empathy for this family and the other family and all the other people scared in Minnesota, which would still only be a first step to saying if you acknowledge it is bad to kill Americans, whether or not it rises to the level of a crime, then what do you do to prevent that from continuing to happen? Andrew Weissman, who is overseeing the FBI and worked at DOJ on exactly how you deal with these tough problems is here. We're back in 90 seconds.

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[Host/Anchor]

We're back with former prosecutor and FBI general counsel Andrew Weissman, who's an MSL legal analyst. Your views on this tonight?

[Andrew Weissman]

Well, one view is for the public not to be distracted by a change in lower level people. What we are seeing in Minnesota and frankly around the country from the west coast to now, the far east coast in Maine, is a result of the policy of Donald Trump. When you have a president who very much is a unitary executive and everyone knows he is controlling all of this, you really can't just, you know, put lipstick on a pig and say, it has nothing to do with me. And so changing around who is there in Minnesota is not changing the policies. It's not changing the license that was given to ICE that caused Renee Goode to be killed. The reaction to that murder was a license to then have what happened to Mr. Preddy. So if you go around not having an investigation of Renee Goode and then you say that nothing happened there, it was all fine with no investigation. What's the message to ice? It's we have your back no matter what. The normal process for anyone in law enforcement is to have an investigation. Everyone in law enforcement knows that. And so this is why this happen. And if it, if the policy.

[Host/Anchor]

Yeah, let me slow you down because this will continue. You're speaking, you're speaking about policy and the causal chain. When you have these incidents, they are of course the front burner. So they are training exercises in that they matter more to the public and many officials, agents than any training they got two years ago because they're the lived reality of what the rules are. And lethal force is supposed to be a last resort when the, when the agent faces only actual lethal threats such as a drawn weapon or something close enough that could cause grievous bodily harm. And here, do you see that on the video? And if not, why would an agent or multiple agents think they could unload that many shots?

[Andrew Weissman]

So two things. One, the first thing before you, if you, even for the people who are listening to this, who have any question, that's why you have an investigation and you have an impartial investigation and you don't end, announce the conclusion of the investigation before the investigation. That is what's so with Renee Goode. There's no investigation. Now there's the conclusion. Then we're told there will be an investigation. This is not the Queen and Alice in Wonderland. And then with respect to what we know so far, I would still have not heard anyone, anyone explain the legitimate second and third bullet shots. With respect to Renee Goode when her car was already past Agent Ross, why is he shooting her two more times? And my understanding of the autopsy is it's one of those two shots that killed her. Then with respect to Mr. Preddy, he, as you said, once you have disarmed him and he is on the ground, what is the explanation for not just 10 but even one shot at that point? And this is not, to quote senior people up to Stephen Miller, a domestic terrorist. This is not somebody who he said was a would be assassin of law enforcement. You see gun rights advocates who are denigrating that characterization because this is administration that believes in the second amendment. So carrying lawfully a gun is not a crime. And just to be to have some empathy here, the last thing on Earth that Mr. Preddy did was help a woman who had been pepper sprayed, who was thrown on the ground and he paid with his life. So everything I'm talking about has a consequence in a real life tragedy. And we're not seeing the administration respond to that. Finally, it's worth pointing out that Mr. Homan, who is being sent there, is somebody who himself has not had an investigation into the allegations of his taking a $50,000 bribe in a Kava paper bag. And there's been no investigation of that. And this is the person who's being sent in who we're supposed to think is the white knight who's going to be a savior in Minnesota. I mean it's really, it's so preposterous the world we're in. And I mean this wouldn't happen in any normal Democratic or Republican administration. And I've served in normal Democratic and Republican administrations.

[Host/Anchor]

Sure. We also see that the ICE and in this case DHS agents are being pulled in with their militarized look to engage in hand to hand combat that at times they're initiating with what are small clumps of protests. Where does that fit into their duties? Because it would seem that if they have an assignment to go find the undocumented and they didn't find any on that block, they can get in their car and move on and continue to search for them. What does it tell you about what you spotlighted tonight, Andrew? The policy failure and problem that they seem to now feel open season to initiate physical contact. We saw a very strong shove to open that interaction. We saw the pepper sprayed. We also saw people pepper sprayed while held down. That's a very clear violation. And then the use of force this way. But it's starting with them picking violent interaction with these people. And unlike, say, when we see the National Guard patrolling, sometimes it happens a big event. These are just neighborhoods they can drive off and continue to look for the undocumented.

[Andrew Weissman]

That is such a great point. So my friends who used to work, who are agents in the FBI, that is exactly one of the things that they pointed out. It's not just a question of de escalation that that's your job in law enforcement. It's that you understand when you're going to speak to someone and you're in law enforcement. If you are arresting a civilian in law enforcement, you understand that that person is going to be scared. Is new. It can be terrifying. They may react badly. And you have to figure out ways to de escalate and calm that situation down. I was listening to a, a police officer in Minnesota talk about how of the over sort of 900 guns that were taken off the street last year and the hundreds and hundreds of arrests done by the local police, not a single shot was fired. That's training. That's people who are not looking to terrorize a civilian population. But if you create ICE as a model of sort of Lord of the Flies or the Stanford Prison Experiment, where you're telling people they have unfettered power and nothing's going to change that and they have absolute immunity, which we've heard, it was retracted, but we initially heard from the vice president. We've heard the same thing from Stephen Miller. That is what results in a group of law enforcement officers who are really not doing what many, many law enforcement officers in this country are trained to do and do day in and day out. So you can really understand why the Minnesotans are saying, you know what, let us handle this. We have a police force here that can do the job and we do not need to have you terrorize the civilian population.

[Host/Anchor]

Yeah. All important points. Thank you, Andrew Weissman. Later tonight, we broaden out to the autocracy questions and the dual state problem here of who's being treated like what. Also the ICE scrutiny and Border patrol tactics that have led us down this path. We have an expert who's going to show you exactly how this is supposed to work. So we stay informed Amid the lies. That's next. There's mounting outrage, criticism and rebukes of how federal agents are operating in Minnesota. The problem is not that enforcement is happening. It's clearly the manner in which these things are happening. These tactics are very obviously not safe.

[Andrew Weissman]

The practices that these ICE and CBP agents are engaged in are not proper police tactics. This is not policing and it's not military service. It's something dangerously undefined.

[Host/Anchor]

This is the third shooting now in.

[Mark Claxton]

Less than three weeks.

[Host/Anchor]

The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year, recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders.

[Mark Claxton]

And we didn't shoot anyone.

[Host/Anchor]

We didn't shoot anyone. The Minneapolis police chief there noting that you can patrol apples to apples, the exact same region that these DHS agents have been flooding. You can collect guns, you can do a lot of work, and you can do it without shooting a nurse to death. This is about policy, as our top guest noted tonight, an FBI veteran, it's about outcomes. And critics say images like this, the gas mask, the guns drawn, the militarized body armor, is exactly the wrong approach. If you are honestly trying to pursue safety. The mass, the fatigues, the menacing attitude, a clear lack of crowd control, training in dealing with protests. And maybe some critics say that's the point. They are not trained to deal with de escalation in peace because from the top there is an effort to escalate, to talk about the insurrection act or martial law. The president talks openly about suspending elections and abusing power. So this is what the shock troops look like, say critics. Border Patrol agents accustomed to confronting cartels or illegal border crossing rather than protesters in urban areas is part of the obvious problem, the Post reports. DHS says it will handle any review of the killing of this American. And that is a problem given that many Trump officials have already announced what they think the conclusion of that should be. After the shooting, local officials were also blocked from even going on the scene by federal agents and they had a judicial warrant. We've talked about federalism and constitutional crises. This report is of your federal government defying the court ordered requirements of your local government having access to a place where your local neighbor was shot to death by the feds. Not a good sign if this is allowed to continue, to say nothing of the tragedy of the loss of life. DOJ also fighting a judge's order to block federal agents about tampering with or destroying evidence. The border agents who killed Freddy have moved, been moved out. So the question tonight is whether there is a cover up of the killing. Will this investigation be credible? And if not, what does it say that a year into Donald Trump's term, as his actual support and credibility drops, he can now to use the phrase potentially get away with murder or get away with killing people without a murder investigation. The videos of the shooting make it clear what happened, who escalated, that the officials were the ones with their guns drawn, then shot him to death, including a shot in the back while he was, as the New York Times and others have accounted, restrained. Here is some of the pushback.

[Andrew Weissman]

It was said that Mr. Peretti was banishing a weapon.

[Host/Anchor]

Well, he was not banishing a weapon.

[Andrew Weissman]

Yes, he did have a weapon.

[Host/Anchor]

It was said that by the White House that Mr. Peretti attacked those agents. No, he did not. I think the administration wants to get back control of the narrative, and they need to. We have Bill Malusian reporting that there are some folks in DHS that are a little bit unhappy with the messaging and understandably so. It is politically disastrous for the president and also not the kind of civil.

[Andrew Weissman]

Society we need to live in. We certainly should not be labeling him as being a domestic terrorist who is going to execute cops. There is no evidence to support that.

[Host/Anchor]

No, there's not. And this is not about a narrative. This is not about messaging. It's not about politics. Although political pressure may yet save a future American from this kind of killing. This is against all odds, still about facts. It is the facts on these videos that have caused so much blowback. It is the facts that the law and justice must care about. It is facts that are ultimately adjudicated when it is allowed in court, and apparently the independent pursuit of those facts, journalistically, in court or in any other way, a local Minnesota investigation, that scares the Trump administration scares them. That the facts could come out and would force them to be held accountable for the facts. What are the facts? Well, we're still gathering them. But contrary to some of what the Trump administration has said and lied about, which I'm not going to repeat on this news program, the New York Times account of this shooting notes that about eight seconds after the victim was pinned. So eight seconds go by, sense the pinning, and then, quote, agents yell that he has a gun. Now, legally, that matters because, as the Times notes, that indicates they may not have known he was armed until he was on the ground and had been pinned, meaning no longer any kind of threat, the agents appear to have him under their control with his arms pinned near his head. The Times reports. After a detailed review and reporting of multiple video angles, as well as their reporters on the scene. And the Times notes, when things turn deadly, quote, as the gun emerges from the melee, another agent aims his own firearm at Preddy's back and appears to fire one shot at close range. At least 10 shots appear to have been fired within five seconds. Those are some of the facts that were gathered. I'm joined by Mark Claxton, retired NYPD detective and director of the Black Law Enforcement alliance, who's worked at the intersection of these issues, public safety and policing, which he's given his life a career to, and civil rights and accountability for proper policing. Given that New York Times account and the administration's claims that this was a terrorist clearly set out on murdering law enforcement, what do you see in the actual evidence?

[Mark Claxton]

What I see is really a bastardization of professional law enforcement. I see really a wasted opportunity. I know Mr. Weissman spoke about the, the importance of gathering evidence and conducting an investigation. And what we're seeing in real time is really the corruption of any criminal investigation, that any investigation of substance, the displacement of potential evidence, the loss of possible identification evidence. There's so much going on here, but that's because the mission itself is unwieldy and unclear and dysfunctional. And the individuals who have been set out to the mission are not properly trained, they're not properly prepared, they're not disciplined. And then you have multiple agencies involved in operations on the street involving a civilian population. So you can see their interactions are really clumsy, awkward. And when you have that along with law enforcement conducting operations, it really is a recipe for disaster. And unfortunately, unless there is a significant pullback or rollback of these type of operations and the enforcement on the street level by this combo team of ice, dhs, Border Patrol, you know, we really could have more fatalities that you know, and they're really avoidable.

[Host/Anchor]

What do you see wrong in the way that they are going at what are sometimes, as I mentioned in the broadcast, small groups of citizens or protesters escalating, drawing weapons, pepper spray.

[Mark Claxton]

Well, it starts really with something that you mentioned and that is the attire, the uniform itself, that militarized attire. It's just peculiar that just a couple of years ago, part of what was labeled a reform movement, one of the main requests was to deep law enforcement because that allowed for better relationships and communications between the civilian population and their law enforcement. So if you start there that now we've really doubled down on the militarization, at least the appearance of it. But actual military equipment on the streets, that's one thing. Then you have a lack of experience on basic, just crowd control, the social sciences, something that you really would learn during the course of a full bodied law enforcement training. You are trained and taught and conditioned how to interact with people, how important it is to de, escalate. Obviously the interactions that we've seen and those that have become tragic, there is an absolute failure in that regard. And then once you go to the situation of Mr. Freddie going hands on automatically as a law enforcement professional, you've just pushed to the side and just de escalation, you've gone hands on. And now you have to really coordinate and communicate clearly with your colleagues around you. So everyone is aware of the level of, of aggression, a level of physicality that's involved, what's the elements that are there that are dangerous. And you don't have a situation where a person may yell out that there is a weapon, a firearm, a gun, and another person's automatic reaction is to discharge the weapon as opposed to assess the situation and have a kind of a cohesive strategy.

[Bill Kristol]

Right.

[Host/Anchor]

And exactly that. If somebody is restrained and disarming them, you want to move the weapon away from the field of impact. You may not want to publicize that to the group of civilians or law enforcement. If you have operational control. If you don't and there's a threat to people around, then that is when you might yell about a weapon. So as you say, there's a lot of steps there that seem to have been involved in leading to what was definitely an avoidable death. Mark Claxton, thank you. We have a break. When we come back, Bill Kristol is here.

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[Andrew Weissman]

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[Host/Anchor]

Militarized agents shooting down Americans dead in the street in broad daylight as they exercise their First Amendment rights. For all the warnings about Trump as an autocrat A would be coup leader, a fascist quote unquote, in 2024 and all the objections that that was exaggerated political rhetoric. Well, now we see the abusive power up close. The New York Times has the headline for Trump, the truth in Minneapolis is what he says it is. Don't believe what you see with your own eyes. Orwell's 1984 has exactly such claims as a dystopian warning. A top Homeland Security lawyer in Trump's first term says, I'm enraged and embarrassed by DHS's lawlessness, fascism and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump. Now Minnesota protesters see this as a clash over their rights.

[Andrew Weissman]

This started as a pretext about immigration.

[Host/Anchor]

And the fraud, whatever. It's well beyond that now. People at home probably are watching going.

[Andrew Weissman]

Oh, it's Minneapolis, it's woke Hoth.

[Host/Anchor]

It doesn't affect me.

[Andrew Weissman]

Whatever it does, it's you.

[Host/Anchor]

It's you as well. Now wake up.

[Andrew Weissman]

Please watch what's happening here. I feel like we're performing CPR on what may already be a corpse called the Constitution.

[Host/Anchor]

I'm joined by Bill Kristol, editor at large for the Bulwark, a founding director of Defending Democracy together. Bill, I've spent the bulk of this broadcast in the details of this, including hearing from law enforcement experts about why this was poor, if and proper, I should say possibly illegal use of force. We turn to you on the broader question of what it means when these kind of troops and militarized agents are being used this regularly on Americans because this was foreseeable and the buck stops at the top.

[Bill Kristol]

You know, obviously I've been very alarmed about Trump for a long time and very, very alarmed about what the second term would be. But I've got to say this weekend has really hit me personally kind of hard. I mean I just to see it, there was the killing three weeks ago, obviously. Renee Goode, that was terrible to see a second one and to see them lie about it and justify it and smear and slander this 37 year old VA nurse who clearly did nothing wrong. And even if he did something wrong, he doesn't deserve to be murdered. You know, I mean, it's really horrifying, I've got to say. And it goes out. You're absolutely right. I really want to stress that it goes to the top. It goes to Trump and Vance and Stephen Miller. Maybe they'll shove Kristi Noem aside, they'll call Bovino back. They can show of a little bit of, you know, reaching out to Governor Walsh. So far as I can tell. They've apologized for none of the lies they've said they would change, none of the practices that got us and policies and behavior that have gotten us here. And they're going ahead with the whole mass deportation effort, which is what has produced this and produced it.

[Host/Anchor]

Incidentally.

[Bill Kristol]

This was, as you say, it was very foreseeable. This was building up over two or three months. And one of the things that built it up was Trump and Vance and Miller praising the Border Patrol and ICE every time they beat up someone, every time they abused someone, every time they violated someone's rights, basically. So of course, the incentive structure was to keep on doing it.

[Host/Anchor]

Right. And what they've said in the breach is after you have a on camera killing of an American, we've had two, the one over the weekend shot in the back, they will lie for you at a high level, which is far stronger than the type of things that were under tremendous criticism in our policing controversy the last several years on George Floyd and elsewhere where the criticized ground was that there was a question of whether there'd be a probe or not. You didn't have people running the entire government saying, if I were to bleep it out here. Bovino, who's just been pulled, he says it's a situation where this individual wanted blank and to do blank. I'm blanking out the lies, which may ultimately be defamatory. Bill Gnome said this individual was going to commit acts of blank. And then afterwards she said that's the facts. I'm not going to use the words she said that are not substantiated by any evidence. FBI Chief Patel says this individual blanked law enforcement. So there are repercussions. Well, there were obviously acts because he was shot to death, but none of these three quotes I could accurately read on air. What does that tell you about the governmental support for that action?

[Bill Kristol]

No, I think absolutely this is why it's. I mean, one should know personally the name of the person who fired the gun and all that. But in a way, I won't quite say it doesn't matter, but in a way it doesn't matter.

[Host/Anchor]

Right.

[Bill Kristol]

This is the culture they've imparted, they wanted to impart there. They've not penalized anyone, to our knowledge for misbehavior, for clear and gross abuses of constitutional rights. Leaving aside even killing, they've lauded agents who've done these things. And so and of course, Bovino and all these prancing around and Nome and then they've dragged in neat people from Other departments, Hank, Seth and all, we stand with you. I mean it's very, it's obviously terrible. It's very, very dangerous. I mean, I do think the, the, the praising of them from the top is very important because if you think about it, people to do this, some people probably like doing it because they're sort of sadists or have bloodlust or something like that or they believe in some kind of crazy authoritarian project. A lot of people do it if it's sort of, you know, maybe it's easier than doing other things. But if they really think there'll be consequences, they might back off. But if they're protected to the top, to the top being the President of the United States who has pardon power, who has the ability to control any investigation, who has the ability to shut down. Apparently Vance said this. State and federal, federal and local investigations. Remember Vance's absolute immunity statement. The context of that was you have a community from any, from the states and the city and the local investigators and charges. In other words, don't worry, we're the only ones who could prosecute you and we won't. Well, what does that do? What does that tell people? It just tells people, you know, you're having a bad day, you're upset, you think, you don't like that, the look of that person, you'll pay no consequence. Super dangerous.

[Mark Claxton]

Right.

[Host/Anchor]

And then that's what people have to understand so people can decide what their response or backlash is. But that's the open season. Bill, thank you. We will be right back. Minnesota and the nation is honoring and mourning Alex Preddy and for all the discussion of how he was treated and killed by Trump federal agents. We also want to take a moment tonight to honor him as a person killed in this tragedy. He was 37 years old, an ICU nurse who cared for among others, ailing veterans. His family wants people to know that he was a kind hearted soul and that he really took his empathy and emotion and personal touch to caring for his patients. There is cell phone video from 2024 that shows Freddy giving some final honors to a veteran whom he had treated.

[Andrew Weissman]

Today we remember that freedom is not free. You have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selflessness service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour we render our honor and our gratitude.

[Host/Anchor]

There we hear from and remember Preddy alive in the way he lived his life. Freddy's parents say we're heartbroken, but also very angry. And though hero is not a term used lightly, they note that his last act was to protect a woman. We showed that video earlier tonight. They say simply he was a good man. His friends, family and others have also been reacting to this sudden and tragic death caused by federal agents.

[Andrew Weissman]

He cared about people deeply and he was very upset with what was happening in Minneapolis and throughout the United States.

[Host/Anchor]

He was always about helping everybody around him, his community, his colleagues. He wasn't outdoors.

[Andrew Weissman]

And then he took his dog everywhere he went. You know, he loved his country.

[Host/Anchor]

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