Confession is Good for the Soul
The challenge in writing about the latest murder by DHS is how to start. After all, much of the country has seen the video of Alex Pretti being shot 10 times and killed – and from various angles. And while it’s important to repeat and keep repeating the basic facts that contradict the easily observable lies from DHS and other Trump officials, it’s still repetition, no matter how important.
So, how to start?
And I think I figured out what, for me, is the best way to go about it. Not by reciting the facts that blatantly contradict the Trump crowd’s egregious, sick lies – but rather, let DHS itself explain how it knows that its agents did something horribly wrong. And DHS not only did this once, but four different ways. Making clear to the public it knows it’s in the wrong, and reinforcing that admission. Basically confessing, whether it knows it or not. Four times.
First, after the shooting of Alex Pretti, the Border Patrol officers left the scene of the shooting. Even the general public knows that's something they can’t do. Flee the scene of an accident it’s involved in? It’s not just wrong, people know it’s illegal! If you’re in a car crash and then drive away, that’s against the law. For federal officers to be involved in a shooting, and not only leave, but not stay to protect the integrity of could be a crime scene and gather evidence, is acknowledgement that the officers know there’s a really big problem if they stick around. Let’s get out of here.
(By the way, this also happened in the shooting murder of Renee Good.)
Second, rather than wait for an investigation and its results, which is standard after any shooting, but required when a federal officer is involved, Border Chief Greg Bovino and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, as well as Trump advisor Stephen Miller, all realized that it wasn’t in their best interest to wait for the results, but had to get out in front of the investigation and try to demean the character of the murdered victim to change the narrative. And so, they immediately stated – as fact – that the murdered victim supposedly was "a would-be assassin" who wanted to do “maximum damage” and that his plan was to “massacre law enforcement". And further, as Noem wrote in a two-sentence tweet, that “This individual committed domestic terrorism. That is the facts.” (Without her actually presenting any "facts.” Only those two sentences.) All of this within just a very short time after the shooting -- all of it long, long before there was an investigation. In some cases, made before they even knew the victim's name, or anything about who he was. That’s telling the public that you feel that you have to smear the victim so that your actions can be seen as justified.
(By the way, this also happened in the shooting murder of Renee Good.)
Just their additional bad luck that Alex Pretti was a white man who worked in a VA hospital as an Intensive Care nurse, had been a Boy Scout and sang in his church choir. And that there's video of him in the hospital giving a beautiful eulogy a year ago over the body of a veteran who had just died.
Third, not only did DHS say it would be cutting out state and local investigation of the shooting – and not only did they say they would even be cutting out the FBI and Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from investigating (!!) – but they said that they themselves would keep the probe in-house and investigate the shooting itself. You don’t circle the wagons and prohibit others from doing their standard jobs (and in the case of BCA, its required job) to investigate a federal officer-involved shooting -- nor do you name yourself the sole investigator when your own leaders have already publicly declared their version of the results before the investigation -- if you want an open, transparent investigation that the public will trust the results. You only do this if you know you have something you want to hide and bury. And doing so makes it clear you are telling the public you know you have something to hide.
(By the way, this also happened in the shooting murder of Renee Good.)
And fourth, Attorney General Pam Bondi released a possible deal with four conditions that, if Minnesota officials agreed to them, could results in pulling DHS from the state. The huge problem with that is that – to begin with – none of the conditions had anything to do with the stated mission of DHS (getting Minnesota documents on Medicaid and food nutrition services to investigate possible fraud, repealing Minnesota laws on sanctuary cities, and being given Minnesota voter roll information) – all of them Trump political issues. And even more, this is the Trump administration giving away their sole intent: because if you truly believe you have a real problem with immigration in the state, a problem so significant that your killing a U.S. citizen was necessary and justified, you stay there until the immigration problem is resolved. But if instead you offer to withdraw your armed presence in order to merely get political information, using what is essentially blackmail, a shakedown, you are telling the public that you know armed immigration officers don't need to be there because there is no actual threat.
Stating the facts from what everyone can see on the various videos is easy:
A woman was pushed to the ground.
Alex Pretti, who has a phone in his right hand recording the scene, his left hand empty, rushes to help the woman.
A group of masked Border Patrol agents pepper spray Mr. Pretti and the woman, drag him to the ground and begin beating him.
His gun (legal in Minnesota) is taken from his belt. He is unarmed. There is nothing in either of his hands, as he struggles and is beaten.
Alex Pretti is shot at least 10 times and killed.
DHS officials, Trump officials can try to convince others of their version of events, regardless of what the public watching the videos have seen. What they can’t avoid is that they themselves have acknowledged publicly four times that they know what their agents did was deeply wrong.
In their own words and actions, they are condemning themselves. Doing so once is damning enough, even if deflected as being misunderstood. But condemning yourself a second time? And then a third? And a fourth?!! That, as they say in the legal profession, is "pattern and practice." That is "consciousness of guilty."
Of course, their biggest problem is that so much of the American public saw the many videos multiple times. And know the truth. And know that anything other than what they literally saw and actually know as the truth is not only a lie, but an effort to cover up the truth, and removes all credibility – at least what credibility DHS still has – from those saying it.
Especially with it being the second DHS murder within days. And with the same discrediting lies.
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