DHS either 'made it up' or agents lied about shooting account: ex-intel officer
Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino looks on after a driver of a vehicle was shot in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S., January 7, 2026. REUTERS/Tim Evans
CNN reporter Josh Campbell questioned some of the statements that came out of the Department of Homeland Security that have been wildly inaccurate in the wake of shooting incidents in Minneapolis.
In both the shooting of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti, President Donald Trump's administration released statements attacking the victims as "domestic terrorists" and alleging they sought to harm or kill federal officers.
Campbell and reporter Tom Foreman walked through a video submitted to the Associated Press from Brennan Gasser showing the shooting from a different vantage point. Both remarked that it was the agents who approached Pretti, shoved a woman nearby, and began hassling the two of them.
"If you're going to have people out there in these chaotic situations that are carrying firearms on behalf of the state and can use deadly force, do they have the levelheadedness? Do they have the bearing? Do they have the discipline in order to try to do other things rather than just go straight to force?" asked Campbell.
"So, this is telling because we're seeing this kind of somewhat of a pattern in a lot of these videos that you see these agents, they're amped up. You know, it's very, very aggressive at times. There have been instances when they themselves have been assaulted. But this is just a, you know, a kind of a feedback loop here that continues because the angrier they get than the protesters get angrier," Campbell continued.
Clearly, no good comes from it, he said in passing.
His final point, however, was asking "where in the world did the White House and DHS get the narrative that somehow Pretti was brandishing a weapon and was trying to massacre these agents? It either means they made it up, because none of this information that we've seen actually bears that out. Or there could be an even more serious question — and that is [a] possible candor issue on behalf of these agents. Did they really tell their bosses that they saw him brandishing a weapon at them before they opened fire? Big questions, both for those on the ground as well as senior leadership."
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