Glenn Kessler is a professional fact-checker. He served in that role for The Washington Post for many years. He left the Post and continues to do what he does best on his own Substack blog. In this post, he reviews the Trump administration’s flurry of lies about the murder of Alex Pretti.

He writes:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
—George Orwell (1984)

A contact who worked for Donald Trump in his first term once explained to me the White House dysfunction this way: “Everyone lies to each other. So no one can believe anything that they are told.” The standard was set by the president, whose constant lies are documented in the media, but few understood how pervasive lying was within the government, even among people who supposedly worked together.

The dynamic is even worse in the second term. Trump is surrounded by sycophants who provide no constraints and offer no contrary advice. And they understand that lying is not only expected but celebrated.

So, when Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, was shot in the back and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday — ten shots fired — the lie machine got to work. Department of Homeland Security officials had to lie to the president, who in turn would be happy to echo those lies. Within hours, a statement was issued:

At 9:05 AM CT, as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun, seen here.

The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. More details on the armed struggle are forthcoming.

Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.

The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

Almost every line in the statement was a lie, as subsequent video analysis and witness reports demonstrated — Pretti was holding a cell phone, not a gun; he was helping a woman who had been shoved to the ground by ICE agents; he was pepper-sprayed by the agents; he did not resist but was pummeled by agents; he was licensed to carry a gun under Minnesota law; an ICE agent removed the gun before he was shot; he was on his knees when he was shot; ICE kept shooting even after he fell to the ground; a doctor reported that ICE initially thwarted his efforts to provide medical aid.

Note what is missing in the statement — any sense of regret or concern about the loss of life. Nor is there any pledge to fully investigate the incident, which used to be the standard in any law-enforcement use of deadly force. (Radley Balko wrote in the New York Times recently about how different ICE statements are from typical police statements — what he called a “projection of power.”)

Instead, the lie was set in motion.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem then attacked Pretti as a domestic terrorist and sought to pin the blame on Democratic politicians in the state.

“When you perpetuate violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and perpetuate violence, that is the definition of domestic terrorism,” she said at a news conference. “This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism,” Noem added. “That’s the facts.”

These were faux “facts” — designed to serve the lie.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller went even further and called Pretti a “would-be assassin” who “tried to murder federal law enforcement,” adding that he is a “domestic terrorist.”

President Trump posted a photo of Pretti’s gun — calling him a “gunman” — and also sought to blame local authorities.

“This is the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!), and ready to go –- What is that all about? Where are the local Police? Why weren’t they allowed to protect ICE Officers? The Mayor and the Governor called them off? It is stated that many of these Police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — Not an easy thing to do!”

The lie began to unravel almost immediately, as videos and sworn witness statements emerged that contradicted the government’s account. But the lie had already taken root, echoed by the administration’s supporters, which is why the administration works hard to get a misleading version of the story out first.

They used the same tactics with the killing of Renee Good, asserting she tried to run over an ICE officer who shot her in self-defense. Witness videos established that was a lie, but the administration controlled the narrative for 24 hours before it all fell apart. (This is why ICE agents harass and intimidate people filing videos. They want to minimize potential evidence.)

The lie about Pretti was debunked within hours. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune produced an excellent fact check. The New York Times visual forensics team quickly assembled the footage. Witness statements emerged.

Here’s what a witness to the shooting — who filmed the encounter — filed in a sworn statement: “The agents pulled the man on the ground. I didn’t see him touch any of them—he wasn’t even turned toward them. It didn’t look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn’t see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.”

The witness added: “I have read the statement from DHS about what happened and it is wrong. The man did not approach the agents with a gun. He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help a woman get up and they took him to the ground.”

Of course, this new evidence didn’t alter the administration’s lie.

Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” this morning to claim that the agents were the real victims. He blamed Pretti — “The suspect put himself in that situation” — and asserted that he aimed to “perpetrate violence, obstruct, delay or obfuscate border patrol in the performance of their duties in an active crime scene.”

A man was shot and killed by federal agents. No remorse. No regret. Remember: They lie to each other and then they lie to the American people. The truth is too dangerous to their plans.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, posted this message on his Substack blog. Having watched Trump apologists on TV today, explaining why it was just to kill Alex Pretti, it was refreshing to encounter simple truths: the murderers running our government, especially the Department of Himeland Security, have no souls.

Their first instinct is to lie.

Anyone who watched the videos saw that Alex had a cellphone in one hand and the other hand was empty. Everyone knows by now that Alex had a registered gun that he never drew, and that was removed by an Ice agent before he was slaughtered. Everyone could see that he advanced to help a woman throw to the ground by ICE and that he never posed a threat to ICE agents.

Krugman wrote:

I was working on another wonkish post about China’s trade surplus when the news about Alex Pretti’s murder broke. I’ll put that post up at some point, but not today.

It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious.

At this point, however, there are no more excuses. In a way the cowards and opportunists enabling Trump are more to blame for where we are than Trump and company themselves: monsters are monsters and can’t help themselves, but the enablers have a choice. And they have chosen, again and again, to accommodate and facilitate evil.

I wish I could believe that the last few weeks will be the last straw, but I don’t. To be honest, I wish I believed in Hell, because if it did exist, the enablers would be going there along with the monsters.

What I do believe in is the courage and decency of millions of ordinary Americans, which have been so dramatically on display in Minneapolis. We can only hope that this courage and decency get us through this nightmare — and we must do all we can to make it happen.