The Dictatorship
The GOP’s narrative around Jack Smith has become incomprehensible
ByAndrew Warren
Former special counsel Jack Smith’s public testimony Thursday should have been a sober accounting of the criminal investigations into President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Instead, the hearing predictably devolved into a scripted parody of reality TV.
The session began with a grandstanding opening statement from House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, followed by prepared speeches and hostile questions that not only ignored Smith’s prior testimony, but often ignored his presence altogether. For example, Jordan declared that Smith’s investigation was “always about politics” without offering a shred of evidence.
Over the course of five hours, Republicans meticulously avoided discussing the substance of what Smith described as Trump’s “criminal scheme” to overturn the 2020 election. Rather than engaging with the evidence, they retreated into well-worn political grievances and attempts to impugn Smith’s character.
Smith’s multi-year investigations resulted in two federal indictments against Trump, convictions of nearly 1,300 Jan. 6 rioters and incalculable controversy. Thursday’s hearing provided a rare opportunity for transparency. It was a chance for lawmakers to scrutinize the evidence underlying the prosecutions, challenge Smith’s decision-making and confirm the absence of political influence behind the special counsel’s work.
Smith had long volunteered to testify publicly, but Republican leadership initially resisted. The committee chose instead to have him testify behind closed doors, focusing on the alleged “weaponization” of the Justice Department under President Joe Biden.
During last month’s eight-hour deposition, Smith provided candid and detailed answers about the evidence against Trump for obstructing the certification of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, and for his mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Because the Republican-led committee already released the full transcript and video of Smith’s Dec. 17 deposition, the motivation for Thursday’s public encore was obviously political.
Over the course of five hours, Republicans meticulously avoided discussing the substance of what Smith described as Trump’s “criminal scheme” to overturn the 2020 election.
Both parties saw value in having Smith repeat his earlier testimony in a televised setting: Democrats aimed to showcase a methodical, evidence-based investigation, while Republicans sought to discredit Smith’s methods and rewrite the history of that day. (The Republican agenda was revealed by another congressional subcommittee — ostensibly formed to investigate “remaining questions surrounding” Jan. 6 — whose first public hearing last week was filled with false and misleading claims.)
On Thursday, Republicans continued the misdirection-driven circus. Republican committee members questioned Smith about subpoenaing phone records of certain Congressman, characterizing the tactic as illegal “spying.” However, Smith testified that the records were evidence of Trump’s attempt to reach lawmakers to delay certification. Furthermore, the subpoenas were approved by a judge and complied with then-existing Justice Department policy.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. — who is not a lawyer — argued that there was no criminal conduct if Trump believed he actually won the election, then didn’t allow Smith to respond and disregarded his detailed deposition testimony as to why this argument was not a legal defense to the charges.
Steering clear of any substantive evidence, Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas — who is also not a lawyer — advanced a fallacious argument that Smith’s appointment was invalid due to technicalities with his swearing-in.
All of this distracts from the fundamental principle at the heart of this: if a president commits a crime while in office, should they be prosecuted?
If the answer is yes, then the party in power should not matter. Inevitably, the president’s die-hard supporters will decry any prosecution as a “witch hunt,” just as many of their opponents may presume guilt before a single piece of evidence is offered. But that is precisely why objective metrics — the independence of the prosecution, the normalcy of the process and the weight of the evidence — matter. They are the tools we have to distinguish between a righteous prosecution and partisan retribution.
Smith’s use of those tools was not problematic or unprecedented. He was appointed as an independent special counsel — a customary practice since Watergate, even though U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon later issued a controversial and legally dubious ruling that the appointment was unconstitutional. And President Biden never directed Smith or anyone at the Department of Justice to prosecute Trump. In fact, Smith testified he never communicated with or received any guidance from President Biden related to the Trump investigations.
This all looks even more benign when contrasted with Trump’s own political prosecutions.
Any objective observer knows which administration has weaponized the DOJ for political gain.
Trump publicly demanded the prosecution of his perceived political enemies, effectively ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to target former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He removed the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a career prosecutor who Trump had appointed, for failing to bring charges against Comey and James. In his place, Trump installed Lindsey Halligan — one of his former personal attorneys who had no prosecutorial experience — to make sure charges were filed. In November, a federal judge dismissed the Comey and James cases after finding Halligan’s appointment was illegal. (Earlier this week, a different federal judge issued a scathing opinion reprimanding Halligan for “masquerading” as the U.S. Attorney in violation of the November ruling. She finally resigned later that day.)
The Comey and James cases are only pieces of a broader campaign against the President’s critics. Trump’s Justice Department has reportedly launched criminal investigations of several political adversaries, including Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The DOJ has even targeted Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Governor Lisa Cook, apparently because Trump disagrees with their monetary policy.
Against the backdrop of these perversions of our justice system, Trump’s vitriol towards Smith — he has called him “deranged,” “a criminal” and “a disgrace to humanity” — is the ultimate projection: a man accused of breaking the law attacking the man responsible for upholding it.
Any objective observer knows which administration has weaponized the DOJ for political gain. Yet Republicans spent much of Thursday accusing Smith of disregarding prosecutorial norms, while ignoring the Trump administration’s flagrant violations of constitutional guardrails.
The hypocrisy is suffocating. It is unclear whether congressional Republicans are intentionally misleading the public to rile their base and appease Trump, or whether they somehow actually believe their own narrative, which has become nearly incomprehensible. It is a world in which Jack Smith and other career federal prosecutors are the bad guys, the Jan. 6 defendants who stormed the Capitol and attacked law enforcement are innocent victims of a government conspiracy (which somehow occurred during Trump’s first administration), and Trump is a bastion of normalcy working to restore the DOJ ‘s independence.
This hallucinatory spectacle raises a jarring question: are we still living in a reality rooted in objective facts, hard truths, and legitimate concerns about our republic? Or have we already succumbed to existing in a world where facts are elective, nuance is dead and 250 years of constitutional values are subordinated to Trump’s demands for political revenge?
This nation cannot survive without a shared foundation for truth. While disagreement about the meaning of facts can be healthy, propping up these blatantly false narratives is malignant cancer. Shifting how we view facts based only on what the president wants to be true makes progress impossible and provides an instrument for autocracy and repression.
If we continue to sacrifice the truth on the altar of a partisan charade, the decline of our democracy will not just be a storyline on our televisions: it will be our reality.
Andrew Warren
Andrew Warren is Deputy Legal Director at Democracy Defenders Action. He previously was a prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department and the elected district attorney in Tampa, Florida.
The Dictatorship
Four statements made by DHS about Alex Pretti’s shooting — and what these videos show that contradict them
Statement #1: “An individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a news conference, adding that the suspect was “brandishing” a firearm.
Video shows Pretti had no visible firearm in his hands or on his body in the minutes before he interacted with immigration officers but was using a cell phone to record immigration raids in the area. This is allowable under the First Amendmentas long as it doesn’t interfere with law enforcement activity, such as an arrest.
The officers do not draw their firearms on Pretti, which would be standard training for how federal law enforcement should react if they see a suspect brandishing a gun.
The federal legal definition of “brandishing” is broad, stating that it doesn’t require the weapon to be directly visible, but that its presence is used to intimidate. There is no evidence from the video that Alex Pretti was using a gun for this purpose.
Statement #2: “This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.”
One of the videos shows Pretti carrying a cell phone in his right hand and appearing to film immigration officers and agents in the area. It’s not yet known if he had had previous interactions with the officers or if this was the first encounter. The officers push him back by his chest to the curb; Pretti continues to keep his phone up, filming the interaction.
In another video, he is seen trying to help up a woman who is steps away and whom a masked officer has pushed down into the ice on a curb. Pretti immediately steps between the two, putting his left hand near the officer, who then pepper sprays him. Pretti raises his left arm and then lowers it as he turns around toward the woman who has been pushed down, the officer now behind him as he knocks Pretti to the ground, joined by several other agents.
Statement #3: “The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently.”
Pretti is seen struggling at first when at least three officers knock him to the ground, eventually joined by four more, but appears to be largely held down with his stomach to the ground and his arms in front of his body. Several moments into the officers’ effort to detail and control Pretti, an officer can be heard on video calling out “gun,” apparently to make fellow officers aware. Within a second or two, an agent fires the first shot. Pretti’s body crumples onto the ground.
A source close to the DHS probe told MS NOW that Pretti had a firearm in his holster, which agents retrieved at some point in the interaction. Minneapolis’ police chief said Pretti was a legal owner of a weapon with a permit to carry it.
Statement #4: “Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”
Video shows Pretti’s hands pinned in front of him on the ground until he is shot, with no evidence he reached for a weapon. Some video clips appear to show another officer reaching towards Pretti’s waistband, retrieving something with his hand that looks like a gun, and stepping away. At roughly the same moment of the officer’s movement away from the suspect and has retrieved with his hand an object that appears to be a gun, someone can be heard saying “gun.”
The border patrol agent fires within a second or two of the officer retrieving this object. A total of ten shots were fired. In the aftermath of the shooting, however, video shows two officers desperately searching the dead man’s body and one yells emphatically, “Where’s the gun?” One officer over the body — and it’s not clear which — yells, “I need scissors. I need someone to cut this shit,” as he tugs at the dead man’s clothes.
Multiple seasoned law enforcement officers told MS NOW that they have been unable to see the justification for the shooting. Some said the video of the officers searching for a gun on Pretti’s dead body suggests to them that the agent who shot Pretti did so believing he had a weapon on his person that was an imminent threat when a fellow officer said “gun.”
If that is true, the officer may have wrongly believed Pretti posed an active threat to his life and the life of others. Earlier video of the fracas suggests instead that the firearm had been safely retrieved and the threat was removed.
Former FBI agent Rob D’Amico said that simply hearing the word “gun” does not authorize an officer in a scuffle to shoot to kill. “You have to see that gun be in a position for it to be used,” D’Amico said. “Many, many times I’ve been in situations like this, the gun has fallen on the ground and someone yelled ‘gun,’ and we didn’t just blindly shoot the person.”
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said in an interview on Face The Nation on Sunday that the videos make clear Pretti was simply engaging in his legal right to free speech, and did not start the confrontation with officers. He said the volume of shootings by “Operation Surge” officers makes plain that their protocols and methods are flawed and dangerous.
“The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone,” O’Hara said. “And now this is the second American citizen that has been killed. It’s the third shooting within three weeks.”
Additional reporting contributed by Ken Dilanian
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal immigration officer shot and killed a man Saturday in Minneapolis, drawing hundreds of protesters onto the frigid streets and ratcheting up tensions in a city already shaken by another fatal shooting weeks earlier.
Family members identified the man who was killed as Alex Prettia 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse who had protested President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in his city. After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and protesters clashed with federal immigration officers, who wielded batons and deployed flash bangs.
The Minnesota National Guard was assisting local police at the direction of Gov. Tim Walz, officials said. Guard troops were sent to both the shooting site and to a federal building where officials have squared off with protesters daily.
Information about what led up to the shooting was limited, Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that federal officers were conducting an operation and fired “defensive shots” after a man with a handgun approached them and “violently resisted” when officers tried to disarm him.
In bystander videos of the shooting that emerged soon after, Pretti is seen with a phone in his hand but none appears to show him with a visible weapon.
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O’Hara said police believe the man was a “lawful gun owner with a permit to carry.”
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a news conference that Pretti had shown up to “impede a law enforcement operation.” She questioned why he was armed but did not offer detail about whether Pretti drew the weapon or brandished it at officers.
The officer who shot the man is an eight-year Border Patrol veteran, federal officials said.
Trump weighed in on social media by lashing out at Walz and the Minneapolis mayor.
Trump shared images of the gun that immigration officials said was recovered and said: “What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers?”
Trump, a Republican, said the Democratic governor and mayor are “are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric.”
Pretti was shot just over a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good on Jan. 7, sparking widespread protests.
Pretti’s family released a statement Saturday evening saying they are “heartbroken but also very angry,” and calling him a kindhearted soul who wanted to make a difference in the world through his work as a nurse.
“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting. Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed,” the family statement said. “Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man.”
Video shows officers, man who was shot
In a bystander video of Saturday’s shooting obtained by The Associated Press, protesters can be heard blowing whistles and shouting profanities at federal officers on Nicollet Avenue.
The video shows an officer shoving a person who is wearing a brown jacket, skirt and black tights and carrying a water bottle. That person reaches out for a man and the two link up, embracing. The man, wearing a brown jacket and black hat, seems to be holding his phone up toward the officer.
The same officer shoves the man in his chest and the two, still embracing, fall back.
The video then shifts to a different part of the street and then comes back to the two individuals unlinking from each other. The video shifts focus again and then shows three officers surrounding the man.
Soon at least seven officers surround the man. One is on the man’s back and another who appears to have a canister in his hand strikes a blow to the man’s chest. Several officers try to bring the man’s arms behind his back as he appears to resist. As they pull his arms, his face is briefly visible on camera. The officer with the canister strikes the man near his head several times.
A shot rings out, but with officers surrounding the man, it’s not clear from where the shot came. Multiple officers back off the man after the shot. More shots are heard. Officers back away and the man lies motionless on the street.
The police chief appealed for calm, both from the public and from federal law enforcement.
“Our demand today is for those federal agencies that are operating in our city to do so with the same discipline, humanity and integrity that effective law enforcement in this country demands,” the chief said. “We urge everyone to remain peaceful.”
Gregory Bovino of U.S. Border Patrol, who has commanded the Trump administration’s big-city immigration campaign, said the officer who shot the man had extensive training as a range safety officer and in using less-lethal force.
“This is only the latest attack on law enforcement. Across the country, the men and women of DHS have been attacked, shot at,” he said.
Walz said he had no confidence in federal officials and that the state would lead the investigation into the latest fatal shooting.
But Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said during a news conference that federal officers blocked his agency from the shooting scene even after it obtained a signed judicial warrant.
Amid the unrest, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats will not vote for a spending package that includes money for DHS. Schumer’s statement increases the possibility that the government could partially shut down on Jan. 30 when funding runs out.
Protests continue in Minneapolis
Protesters converged at the scene of the shooting despite dangerously cold weather.
At midday Saturday, the worst of an extreme cold wave was over, but the temperature was still -6 degrees (-21 Celsius).
After the shooting, an angry crowd gathered and screamed profanities at federal officers, calling them “cowards” and telling them to go home. One officer responded mockingly as he walked away, telling them: “Boo hoo.” Agents elsewhere shoved a yelling protester into a car. Protesters dragged garbage dumpsters from alleyways to block the streets, and people who gathered chanted, “ICE out now” and “Observing ICE is not a crime.”
As dark fell, hundreds of people gathered quietly by a growing memorial at the site of the shooting. Some carried signs saying “Justice for Alex Pretti.” Others chanted Pretti’s and Good’s names. A doughnut shop and a clothing store nearby stayed open, offering protesters a warm place as well as water, coffee and snacks.
Caleb Spike said he came from a nearby suburb to show his support and his frustration. “It feels like every day something crazier happens,” he said. “What’s happening in our community is wrong, it’s sickening, it’s disgusting.”
___
The age of the man who was shot has been corrected to 37, per information from the police chief. The AP previously reported his age as 51 based on a hospital record.
___
Santana reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Giovanna Dell’Orto, Tim Sullivan and Sarah Raza in Minnesota, Jim Mustian in New York, Michael Catalini in New Jersey and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles also contributed.
NEW YORK (AP) — Renée Fleming has withdrawn from two scheduled May appearances at the Kennedy Center, the latest in a wave of cancellations since President Donald Trump ousted the previous leadership and the new leadership’s announcement that the venue would be renamed the Trump Kennedy Center.
The Grammy-winning soprano was to have appeared with conductor James Gaffigan and the National Symphony Orchestra. Her decision is unsurprising; a year ago she resigned as “Artistic Advisor at Large,” citing the forced departures of Kennedy Center Chair David Rubenstein and its president, Deborah Rutter. The center itself referred to “a scheduling conflict” as the reason she dropped out of the May concerts.
“A new soloist and repertoire will be announced at a later date, and the remainder of the program remains unchanged,” reads a statement on the Kennedy Center web site that was posted this week. Fleming did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bela Fleck and Issa Rae are among the many other artists who have called off events at the Kennedy Center, which has been part of Trump’s broader attack on what he calls “woke” culture. Earlier this month, the Washington National Opera announced it was severing ties with the Kennedy Center, where it had performed since 1971.
The musical presenters Vocal Arts DC, who earlier this week called off three Kennedy Center concerts because of “financial circumstances,” announced Friday they had found new venues for such scheduled performers as tenor Benjamin Bernheim and pianist Carrie-Ann Matheson. Bernheim and Matheson will appear next month at George Washington University, where the Washington National Opera is staging two operas this spring.
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