The federal government owes Americans a thorough investigation and a truthful accounting of the Saturday morning shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti on a Minneapolis street. When the government kills, it has an obligation to demonstrate that it has acted in the public interest. Instead, the Trump administration is once again engaged in a perversion of justice.
Mere hours after Mr. Pretti died, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, declared without offering evidence that Mr. Pretti had “committed an act of domestic terrorism.” Gregory Bovino, a border patrol official, offered his own assessment: “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
These unfounded and inflammatory judgments pre-empt the outcome of an investigation, which the Department of Homeland Security has promised. They also appear wholly inconsistent with several videos recorded at the scene.
Those videos showed that Mr. Pretti had nothing but a phone in his hands when he was tackled by border patrol agents, and that he never drew the gun he was carrying (and reportedly had a license to carry). Indeed, the videos seem to show that one federal agent took the gun from Mr. Pretti moments before a different agent shot him from behind. Separate analyses by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press, CBS News and other organizations all concluded that the videos contradict the Trump administration’s description of the killing.
The administration is urging Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Ms. Noem and Mr. Bovino are lying in defiance of obvious truths. They are lying in the manner of authoritarian regimes that require people to accept lies as a demonstration of power.
Even worse is that all of this feels so terribly familiar. Earlier this month, a federal agent shot and killed another Minneapolis resident, Renee Good. In that case, too, the Trump administration has demonized the victim and has blocked a state investigation of the killing.
Truth is a line of demarcation between a democratic government and an authoritarian regime. Mr. Pretti and Ms. Good are dead. The American people deserve to know what happened.
The temperature in Minneapolis is dangerously high. There is an urgent need for the federal agents deployed to the city to step back and take a breath before more Americans are hurt or killed. Those protesting the Trump administration have an equal obligation to avoid violence.
The American people also need answers about whether federal agents acted inappropriately, and the behavior of the Trump administration means that it will be impossible to trust any federal investigation that it conducts. President Trump and his appointees have demonstrated themselves to be unconcerned with truth and willing to lie to serve their own interests. Congress therefore must step in. The Constitution vests it with the power to hold hearings, issue subpoenas and demand answers.
Congress ought to investigate both the circumstances of the recent killings in Minneapolis and the broader conduct of the federal agencies engaged in Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, including their treatment of peaceful protesters. The video evidence shows that the incident that ended in Mr. Pretti’s death began when a federal agent lunged at a protester and knocked her to the ground. There are many similar videos and documented instances of federal agents using unnecessary violence against people who are peacefully protesting or documenting events — both behaviors protected under the First Amendment.
Congress has the power to hold the administration accountable through its control of federal spending. A pending bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security offers a crucial opportunity to perform scrutiny and impose necessary guardrails, such as funding for body cameras.
The federal government also has sought to prevent investigations by the state of Minnesota. This must end. A federal judge in Minnesota issued a temporary restraining order on Saturday evening, at the behest of the state, barring federal agencies from destroying evidence related to Mr. Pretti’s killing. The need for such an order is both evident and extraordinary.
“The credibility of ICE and D.H.S. are at stake,” Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican increasingly at odds with Mr. Trump, posted on social media on Saturday. “There must be a full joint federal and state investigation. We can trust the American people with the truth.”
The Trump administration has made no attempt to calm the waters in Minneapolis. It is a disgrace that the first public comment by Mr. Trump in the wake of Mr. Pretti’s death was to post a picture on social media of what he described as “the gunman’s gun.” Stephen Miller, arguably Mr. Trump’s most influential adviser, wrote on social media, without offering evidence, that Mr. Pretti was “an assassin.”
It is premature to reach conclusions about what exactly happened on that Minneapolis street. The Trump administration should not have done so, and we will not do so. What is clear, however, is that the federal government needs to re-establish public faith in the agencies and officers who are carrying out Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration. If the administration is allowed to act with impunity and avoid even the most basic accountability, the result will be more violence.
Source photograph by Victor J. Blue for The New York Times.
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