The Justice Department said Friday it has opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis last weekend, a reversal from its handling so far of shootings involving agents during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
“We’re looking at everything that would shed light on that day,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a news conference Friday. Blanche said FBI investigators will continue to work with the Department of Homeland Security, which has been conducting its own “use of force” investigation into whether its agents followed protocol during the incident.
But even as he disclosed the existence of the new inquiry, Blanche sought to downplay its significance, saying he did not want to “overstate what’s happening.”
“This is what I would describe as a standard investigation by the FBI when there are circumstances like what we saw last Saturday,” he said. “And that investigation — to the extent it needs to involve lawyers at the civil rights division, it will involve those.”
Still, comments from the Justice Department’s No. 2 official marked an about-face from the Trump administration’s previous rhetoric surrounding Pretti’s death. Initially, administration officials said no civil rights investigation was warranted, a position that sparked national outrage and calls — including from some Republican lawmakers — for an independent probe.
Blanche’s remarks Friday came just hours after President Donald Trump maligned Pretti and defended federal officers. In a social media post, he labeled Pretti “an agitator, and perhaps, insurrectionist.”
After federal officers shot Pretti on Jan. 24, administration officials said DHS would lead an internal use of force review with assistance from the FBI.
The first signs in a shift in the administration’s strategy emerged Thursday evening, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem told Fox News host Sean Hannity that the FBI was now leading the investigation.
“We will continue to follow the investigation that the FBI is leading and giving them all the information they need to bring that to conclusion and make sure that the American people know the truth of the situation and how we can go forward and continue to protect the American people,” Noem said.
A DHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the reasons behind the decision to let the FBI take the lead. Steve Schleicher, an attorney for Pretti’s family, said the family’s focus was now “on a fair and impartial investigation that examines the facts around his murder.”
Noem, in her interview with Hannity, distanced herself from earlier statements she made in the hours after Pretti’s death, in which she called him a “domestic terrorist” and accused him of brandishing a gun and seeking to “massacre” officers.
In their statements in the days after the shooting, “we were using the best information we had at the time, seeking to be transparent with the American people and get them what we knew to be true on the ground,” Noem said.
A Washington Post analysis of videos that captured Pretti’s shooting from several angles showed Pretti stopping to help a woman who had been knocked down by Border Patrol agents. Federal agents then wrestled him to the ground. An agent had secured a handgun Pretti had in his possession before two officers shot him multiple times, administration officials said in a court filing earlier this week.
Videos released Wednesday showed that 11 days before his death, federal officers had wrestled Pretti to the ground after another incident in which he kicked a taillight off their SUV. A representative of the Pretti family said the family knew about the incident and said Pretti “sustained injuries” in the altercation “but did not get medical care.”
Blanche said Friday that FBI investigators will be reviewing those videos and interviewing witnesses as part of its probe.
Federal officers and agents in the Minneapolis area have been involved in three shootings in the span of a few weeks. Minneapolis resident Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot by an immigration officer while behind the wheel of her SUV on Jan. 7.
The Post reported that the FBI briefly opened a civil rights investigation into the Good shooting before changing course under direction of top Justice Department officials to investigate Good’s partner instead. Blanche previously said he saw no basis to open a civil rights investigation into Good’s death.
Federal prosecutors in Minnesota — who typically would be involved — have grown increasingly frustrated with the department’s handling of the Good and Pretti cases. The Post reported Thursday that many confronted the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the state, Daniel Rosen, this week, indicating they are on the verge of resigning from the Justice Department over its handling of those matters.
Amid the tumult, the recently installed acting head of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, Jarrad Smith, was reassigned this week, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic personnel moves. The exact reasons behind that decision were not immediately clear Friday.
After Good’s shooting, department leaders made the highly unusual decision to back out of an evidence-sharing agreement to investigate the death alongside state and local authorities. They barred local investigators from accessing the scene of Pretti’s shooting last weekend, prompting Minnesota officials to obtain a federal court order barring DHS and the FBI from destroying any evidence tied to the case.
Blanche sidestepped reporters’ questions Friday on whether, after its reversal on Pretti, the Justice Department had also now opened a civil rights probe into the Good shooting or was considering doing so.
“There are thousands, unfortunately, of law enforcement events every year where somebody is shot,” he said. “The civil rights division of the Department of Justice does not investigate every one of those shootings. There has to be circumstances or facts that warrant an investigation.”
Law enforcement officers are rarely charged for using lethal force, in part because the law provides significant leeway for officers to decide when use of force is needed. Law enforcement experts have said, however, that an accurate conclusion can only be reached if officials examine all relevant state and federal laws and their application to the facts in the case.
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