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CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip
Homan Takes Over Operations in Minnesota. So here are the major headlines; Noem Faces Calls To Step Down; Trump and Two Sons Sue IRS and Treasury Department for $10 Billion. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired January 29, 2026 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight, a man is facing charges after allegedly trying to free Luigi Mangione from jail with sources saying that this person falsely claimed he was an FBI agent who had a court order for Mangione's release. And when officials searched his backpack, they found a barbecue fork and a pizza slicer. It's not clear what connection, if any, he has, to Mangione.
Thanks for joining us tonight. CNN "NewsNight" with Abby Phillips starts now.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Tonight, a major reversal in Minneapolis. A change at the top and a new tone.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: We will conduct targeted enforcement operations.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (voice-over): Tom Homan takes charge. What it means for a city on the brink. Plus, new CNN analysis of the Alex Pretti shooting. What two officers did in the moment and how the new guidelines for ICE will change how agents engage with protesters. And the first cabinet meeting of the year.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We're all doing great.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP (voice over): But it's what's not said and who was not mentioned that's getting the most attention. Should Kristi Noem call her office? Also, the FBI is chasing Trump's 2020 election conspiracy theories.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNKNOWN: I told him to stay the hell out of Polk County.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: In a late night tirade, Trump blames everyone from Obama to Italy for his loss. Live at the table, Scott Jennings, Jemele Hill, Jose Antonio Vargas, Betsy McCaughey, and Elie Honig. Americans with different perspectives aren't talking to each other. But here, they do.
PHILLIP (on-camera): Good evening, I'm Abby Phillip in New York. Let's get right to what America's talking about. Reversing course. Strategy shift. Turning the page. Whatever you want to call it. The White House just made a sharp u-turn on one of the biggest policy priorities of President Trump's second term -- immigration enforcement.
And today, we heard directly from Trump's border czar as he takes over operations in Minnesota. So here are the major headlines. Tom Homan has now ordered federal authorities to work on an eventual drawdown plan in the state. So, what does that look like? Well, Homan says it will mean more targeted operations and that agents are going to focus on working in jails and prisons and less on the street.
Now, for weeks, the Trump administration has been grappling with intense backlash following two deadly ICE shootings in Minneapolis. The new plan marks a significant change in its approach to immigration enforcement and in tone.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRICIA MCLAUGHLIN, DHS ASSISTANT SECRETARY: We will remain in Minneapolis forever.
HOMAN: When the violence decreases, we can draw down those resources.
KRISTI NOEM, DHS SECRETARY: This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism.
HOMAN: As a career law enforcement officer, we'll let the investigation roll out.
UNKNOWN: The suspect put himself in that situation.
HOMAN: I don't want to see anybody die, even the people we're looking for.
NOEM: Governor Walz and Mayor Frey, they instead choose violence.
HOMAN: Bottom line is you can't fix problems if you don't have discussions.
NOEM: Our officer followed his training, did exactly what he's been taught to do.
HOMAN: Nothing's ever perfect. Anything can be improved on.
STEPHEN MILLER, U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR: To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.
HOMAN: They're trying to do it with professionalism. If they don't, they'll be dealt with. I didn't come to Minnesota for photo ops or headlines.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Jose Antonio Vargas joins us. He is the author of "Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen." Jose, we rarely see things like this coming from the Trump administration, but it is important and significant because it's clearly a recognition that the backlash has reached the White House and they don't think that they can weather this storm.
JOSE ANTONIO VARGAS, AUTHOR, "DEAR AMERICA, NOTES OF AN UNDOCUMENTED CITIZEN": And I have to say, the credit to me really goes to all the people in Minnesota, all the protesting that we saw of all races and colors, Republican, Democrat, Independent coming together and saying, this is not what Minnesota is about, and we don't want ICE here.
I think it's amazing, by the way, if you're not reading the "Minneapolis Star Tribune," please read it, contribute, because the local reporting happening on the ground. My friend Steve Grove is now the CEO there and they've done an incredible job really making sure that we're seeing what's happening community by community and neighbor by neighbor.
[22:05:00]
But I have to say, what does it look like, to me, look, what President Trump is good at is looking at the optics. You know what would be an amazing optic? Can we actually find a solution to immigration, rather than keeping, throwing, I don't know how many hundreds of billions of dollars trying to do what we're doing that doesn't make any sense?
Poll after poll has now shown that the majority of public doesn't agree with what ICE is doing. What does the solution actually look like?
PHILLIP: And I'll just say, look, Tom Homan is no immigration softy. He is a hardliner, okay, people? This is not somebody who is like trying to do something different from the objective that Trump wants. But Elie, it strikes me what he laid out today is common sense. It's something that could have potentially been worked out from the beginning if there had been an attempt to.
And it also rolls back the most aggressive forms of ICE enforcement, the roving patrols, potentially. All right, we'll see what happens. The roving patrols, the stop and show me your papers, the going after people, you know, as they're dropping off their kids at school. Those are the things that raise constitutional questions that raise morality questions, frankly.
ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Today was a good day. I'm not saying it's over. I'm not saying it's solved. I'm not saying we're in the clear, but whichever side of this, John, this was a good day. This was a good step (inaudible) Tom Homan. And to your point, Jose, I've been saying on this show, Abby, not everything has a legal lawsuit- based solution. The lawsuits have failed. But to your point, sometimes something demands a political solution. This is the way our politics are supposed to work, right? There's an outrage that comes from the streets, that comes from politicians on both sides of the aisle and eventually the White House responds.
(CROSSTALK)
HONIG: Well, hang on. The main points that Tom Homan made today that are good things are we're going -- and we'll see if they follow up, we'll hold them to it. But we're going to focus on the violent offenders. We're going to focus on people who are in prisons and jails. We're not going to go door to door. We're not going to set up checkpoints.
We're not going to do those things that are on the borderline of constitutionality or over the line of being unconstitutional. What I think everyone can agree on, right? Even if you're, you know, what you do, Jose, Scott, where you're coming from is that it's worth prioritizing going after not just people who are here illegally, but people who are here illegally and have committed other crimes. And if there's agreement and consent on that between the state and the feds, good, good. That's a good thing.
BETSY MCCAUGHEY (R) FORMER NEW YORK LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: Well, I like the fact that you're invoking the United States Constitution because it clearly says that immigration law is a federal issue and that individual states, whether it's Minnesota, or any other state cannot simply say, we're not part of the United States, We're not going to follow this law.
All throughout American history, states have tried that starting with 1798, and then again and again, the Supreme Court has said, no, an individual state can't decide, they're not going to abide by federal law. Florida can't decide, its residents are not going to pay income taxes anymore?
PHILLIP: Where are you getting that Minnesota is not abiding by federal law?
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: They're not abiding by federal law because the federal law says that immigration is a policy that belongs to the President and to the Congress.
PHILLIP: Okay, but yes, how are they violating federal law?
MCCAUGHEY: Because they are impeding the enforcement.
PHILLIP: How are they doing that?
MCCAUGHEY: Oh, with these protests. That for example --
PHILLIP: Are you talking about the state or are you talking about individuals who are going out the streets and protesting?
MCCAUGHEY: No, I'm talking about the state because Minnesota like Connecticut, like New York, like several others have done everything they can to impede their law enforcement, not just from assisting, but even cooperating. For example --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: There's nothing in federal law that says that local law enforcement has to cooperate with --
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: Well, yes, because the right now, ICE --
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: Let me just -- ICE has warrants for 270 people in Minnesota jails and Minnesota refused to hand them over. That is a violation of federal law.
HONIG: Okay, this is why today was progress because ideally, and I've done this, okay? I've been with the state, I've been with the feds, I've worked across the aisle. If you want to do this right and efficiently, then yes, the state will work with the feds. A lot of states work with the feds. A lot of states share information with the feds, but they don't have to. I don't think it's good policy, but the law does not require the states to turn over information to the feds. If you're doing this in the real world, the way to do it efficiently and effectively is cooperatively. And this was a step towards that.
JEMELE HILL, "SPOLITICS WITH JEMELE HILL"PODCAST HOST: But how is it progress though if -- there can't be progress without justice. So, where's the justice when we don't even know or have the names of the officers who potentially --
HONIG: Yes, but that's a separate question. I agree.
HILL: Yes, but so, look, it was, was it a step? I guess, if you want to read it that way. To me, a real step is we need to know who the officers were and we need to know what kind of disciplinary action and or criminal action they will face for the death of Alex Pretti. Until we know that, then to me, all of this talk about how they're going to change doesn't matter. Because honestly, hearing him talk about what the directives were and how they're changing.
[22:10:02]
The original directives were wrong. They should have never been in place anyway. This level of aggressiveness on these people. And I hope that America's were and how they're changing. The original directives were wrong. They should have never been in place anyway. This level of aggressiveness on these people. I hope that Americans, not just those in Minneapolis, and you alluded to this.
I hope everybody everywhere, because sometimes with this barrage and constant chaos that we are confronted with, people feel overwhelmed. They feel hopeless. And I hope this is an indication and a signal to them that your voice still matters because there's so much happening in our news cycle where people don't feel that way.
PHILLIP: Let me just play, this is from Caitlin Dickerson. She's one of the foremost experts in how federal immigration works. This is how she's talking about what ICE enforcement used to look like. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAITLIN DICKERSON, "THE ATLANTIC" STAFF WRITER: What ICE agents did historically is that they would identify someone they wanted to arrest, do lots of work at a desk on a computer before they ever pursued this person to confirm their identity, to confirm they had no claim to legal status in the United States.
Once that work was done, they would often go to the person's house at five or six in the morning, knock on the door and try to take them into custody often while other relatives are still sleeping and before they leave for work for the day.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And that was done, she points out, not just to minimize the impact -- the community impact, but also to protect the officers from these high visibility operations that actually can also put them in danger. And I think what Tom Homan is signaling is that they are going to go back to doing that kind of thing where they do their homework first before they knock on someone's door or knock down someone's door as we've seen them do.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I thought Homan's press conference this morning was a master class, and it's obvious that the President made a smart decision in sending him there to reset the situation. I think the President -- no president wants to see chaos in any city for any reason. I mean, that's not good for the country. It's not good for a presidency.
Homan has clearly already made a huge difference. He met with the local officials. This agreement that he has, apparently with the attorney general Ellison about working, to Elie's point, with the county jails. That's one of the things the White House has been asking for is some cooperation at the jails. This is clearly a step in the right direction.
Now, as you pointed out, Abby, he's still very much an immigration hardliner. And even though they are going to prioritize people who have other criminal issues, he said, if you're in the country illegally, you're never off the table. And so, he was also still signaling to the President's supporters that, listen, we're not backing down on the President's priorities on illegal immigration.
He also said today that he was very much aware of these organizations that are going on the signal groups, these what's that groups that are trying to organize the impeding a federal law enforcement, and he said he was very much looking into that. He was clearly very aware of that. I think that was good news. So overall, look, overall, I agree with Elie. This was clearly a good -- if you believe that having less chaos and more efficiency in government and more cooperation is good, today was clearly very good.
PHILLIP: I was going to ask you that because I feel like the last few weeks, you've been defending some of the more aggressive tactics. Do you feel now that they were a mistake?
JENNINGS: I don't feel sending federal law enforcement to enforce federal law was a mistake.
PHILLIP: I'm talking about the tactics, how it's being done that, whether or not they are detaining people, but how they're doing it. The random stops, the roving patrols, the middle of the day knocking down of people's doors, maybe without a judicial warrant, especially in that one case where they actually were very wrong about who lived in that house. So, do you feel like sitting here now, given that Homan is seeming to pull some of that back, that it was a mistake to go that far?
JENNINGS: Well, I agree with what Homan said about that today. Nothing's perfect and everything can be improved. And if you look at the totality of it, they did arrest a great number of very, very bad people. They did get a lot of very, very violent, terrible people out of the community. And we've also seen a situation in Minneapolis that nobody wants to see. And if Tom Homan who I trust a lot says things can be improved and things can be better, I trust his words. So, I think that's a good thing.
PHILLIP: All right, I'm going to pause here. We have much more ahead when we come back from this quick break. A new CNN analysis of the video of Alex Pretti's death shows the actions of two officers in the moments before the shooting. How Tom Homan's new guidelines could change how officers interact with the public.
Plus, under pressure Bipartisan calls rise for Kristi Noem to step down. How today's cabinet meeting shed some light inside the chaos in the Trump administration.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:19:00]
PHILLIP: Tonight, a new CNN analysis is shedding light on the actions of the two federal officers who shot Alex Pretti. Neither have been named but after days of outcry both are now on administrative leave. By this point you've seen the video. But our analysis shows in clear detail how the aggressive actions of the two federal officers transformed an encounter into a deadly shooting.
Now, while agents are restraining Pretti on the street and another removes the handgun from his waistband, the video shows two agents, one in a tan beanie and another in a black beanie, escalating the confrontation, first by pepper spraying Pretti and then striking him repeatedly in the face and on the head, then drawing their weapons and firing at him while he was on the ground unarmed. Law enforcement experts who reviewed this video say the officer's use
of deadly force likely stemmed from a lack of training or a failure by those agents to follow it during this encounter.
[22:20:00]
And here's how one former chief of staff of ICE put it, quote, "Law enforcement should always be looking to defuse the situation, to deescalate situations. Instead of doing that, they're leaning into ways that they can escalate.
CNN reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for a comment and here's what they said, quote, "Border patrol agents are highly trained, required to meet the highest standards of professionalism and law enforcement capability. Many of our agents have backgrounds in the military or in local law enforcement, and border patrol agents receive extensive federal law enforcement training at law enforcement training centers just as ICE officers do."
One of the key pieces of information there as we've been talking about all week is that this was a shooting that was carried out by Border Patrol and Customs and Border Enforcement agents and they are a different agency. They are usually not dealing with, you know, street issues in American cities. And the instinct to either escalate or de- escalate becomes extremely important in a situation like this.
HILL: But I don't know that I would give them or so readily give them the excuse of lack of training. And the reason why wouldn't is because when you listen to the mentality, you know, the rhetoric coming from the Vice President, the President, Stephen Miller, they escalated these situations before they even got into it.
By that I mean, when you are telling these officers you have complete immunity, that you are there to basically go in there and create as much havoc as possible, you know, to quote one of my favorite quotes from remember the titans is "attitude reflects leadership," all right? They're behaving in a way because they know that there is no consequence for what they have what they do.
So, regardless of training, if you're telling this particular unit of the government, you have every authority to go in there and bust people's heads. What do you think they're going to do? They're going to act like that as soon as they encounter the public, especially since you have over aggressively put these people in this community and what appears to be retaliation to begin with. So, this outcome is not surprising when you consider the way they were gassed up to go into this community to start with.
PHILLIP: Let me just play really quickly, Anderson Cooper spoke to a witness who this shooting and she talks about what she witnessed from some of these officers while she was recording.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KAYLA SCHULTZ, WITNESSED AND RECORDED OFFICERS SHOOTING ALEX PRETTI: The last thing that that federal agent who came up to my window said, and he screamed it at the top of his lungs, right in my face, was that I'm a fucking (BEEP).
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Have you ever had a law enforcement officer say anything like that?
SCHULTZ: No, absolutely not. No one's ever actually called me that word at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And so, and Elie, just a point of context, she was sitting inside a vehicle when this happened.
HONIG: Yes, it's really hard, given what we know from the video. And it's a lot, it's not everything, but it's a lot. It's really hard to defend the conduct of those police officers on the day Alex Pretti was fatally shot. And look, I've worked overseeing police academies. That is not how you're trained. That is not de-escalation. That is precipitous escalation.
And we made this point the other night. I want to add something to it. Cops here in New York City, Newark, Bridgeport, Connecticut, wherever you are, stop people with guns every day and they don't shoot them and kill them for merely having guns. And we've now seen the video, which I think we'll talk about later, of the incident with Alex Pretti where he breaks the tail light 11 days earlier.
The scrum that he ends up on the bottom of is very similar to the scrum 11 days later. But the first one, they don't shoot him. They rough him up and he gets up and he brushes himself off. I mean, and so I don't know how you look at the shooting of Alex Pretti on Saturday and say that that was a justified use of force, that there was an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to those cops who were piled on top of him.
But one more thing, to Jemele's point earlier, I'm not confident we're going to get a full criminal investigation of this. The way it's structured, minor FBI presence, no DOJ prosecutorial presence, said this before, I'm raising this flag, I don't think this investigation is going to pass muster.
VARGAS: And the thing that I keep trying to -- because you brought up the Constitution, we constitutionally have a right to protest, don't we? Isn't that what all those neighbors are doing, showing up? They're not domestic terrorists. Their neighbors who were like, wait, that's my neighbor. She lives in this community. Isn't that what Renee was doing? And look, in terms of having a firearm, isn't that protected under the second amendment?
MCCAUGHEY: I'm so glad to hear the leftist.
VARGAS: I am not from the left or the right.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: I'm watching this flip flop and I do love it. Everyone's so eager to defend. (CROSSTALK)
VARGAS: But again -- but though, isn't the word impede, isn't -- don't people in America have the constitutional right to protest? Yes or no?
[22:25:00]
JENNINGS: They do. I would just point out to you though that in a court case in Minnesota this week, there was a district court ruling that was overturned by the 8th circuit and the panel of the 8th circuit said they had reviewed hours and hours of footage from all these supposed protests. And even though some people were doing protected speech and protected protests, that much of the time it crossed the line that it was not protest activity.
So, it's not all just protesting. Some of it is. Some of it is crossing the line. Some of it is designed to impede federal law enforcement. And that is a crime.
(CROSSTALK)
HONIG: And people who do that -- people who do that --
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: -- kicked in a tail light of one of those ICE cars two weeks before.
HONIG: When he kicked in that tail light, you know what should have happened? He should have been arrested --
(CROSSTALK)
HONIG: Destruction of government --
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: He'd probably be alive today.
HILL: Or maybe if some officers had, I don't know, shot him 10 times. That might have also been --
(CROSSTALK)
VARGAS: I felt like I was watching a video game. I know about all of you. I felt like I was watching it. It was a call of duty.
MCCAUGHEY: I think that this discussion of the crimes --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- raise their weapons is I think a huge piece of this. And that's the part, you know, you've got news organizations here at CNN, "The New York Times" and others looking at this frame by frame. Are they doing that in the Justice Department? Because it seems like it needs to be done.
MCCAUGHEY: Yes. But I think there should clearly be an investigation. But I think we should, as tragic as these deaths are and any death is tragic like this, we should look beyond this and not lose sight of the fact that President Trump ran on a platform to close the border and enforce immigration law. And Americans want immigration law enforced because the burden of all these people coming across the border, millions of them, depending on us to feed them, clothe them, house them, educate their children, it's not fair to Americans to have this increasing burden.
And when I look at the budgets of a city like New York City, now $12 billion in the hole, Connecticut facing enormous costs, Illinois, California, wherever the migrants have gone, taxpayers are expected to shoulder the burden.
HILL: But you're making them like the boogie men and boogie women, though. We have a lot of excess in this country. There's a lot of things which we could be doing better.
MCCAUGHEY: We do not have access to take care of the entire southern hemisphere any more than Europe does and they are facing the same burden.
PHILLIP: I don't know that it's fair to say, and I know Jose, you have something to say about this. Well, I'm not sure that it's fair to say that it's all a one way street. The United States has defied much of the world with our productivity, with our growth, and that is largely because of the contributions of immigrants, and people who have come into this country.
MCCAUGHEY: Legally.
PHILLIP: And on top of that --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Not all of them are legal. It's the overall contribution. So, I do think it's a two-way street in terms of immigration.
VARGAS: Well, we can go, mean, this is where the journalist in me just has all the alarm bells about, we looking at the same set of facts? I'm from California.
MCCAUGHEY: I'm a journalist, too. I can tell you that I'm looking at the budget of New York City, currently $12 billion in the hole.
VARGAS: And you blame that on undocumented people.
MCCAUGHEY: Well, I do, I can tell you. How much was spent housing all these people who suddenly came in over last four years, feeding them and clothing them and it was billions of dollars.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Jose, the surge of migration from the southern border which was facilitated by Governor Abbott in Texas, did create a financial hole for cities like New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, et cetera.
VARGAS: And you cannot conflict that, for example, in a state like California, where there's two million undocumented people who pay taxes. The governor of California will tell you that you cannot have the economy of California, which is what? The fourth largest in the world? It is the way that it is because of immigrants, regardless of status.
PHILLIP: All right, we're going to leave it there. The first cabinet meeting of the year, one big topic did not make the agenda, and a key player wasn't even called on or praised. We'll debate what that's about, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:30:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIP: Are Kristi Noem's days as Homeland Security Secretary numbered? Well, both Democrats and Republicans are calling for her immediate dismissal over the chaotic operations in Minneapolis, particularly her immediate response to the deaths of two American citizens who were shot and killed by federal agents.
Now, all of this is coming as President Trump held his 10th public cabinet meeting since he was reelected. And normally, it's a chance for the cabinet to shower Trump with praise, to tout their successes, and to answer questions from the press. But this time, things were very different.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: So with that, we are going to ask a couple of people to say a few words. And we're not going to go through the whole table because the last time we had a press conference, it lasted for three hours. And some people said he closed his eyes. Look, it got pretty boring.
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: In all fairness, love these people. I love these people. But there's a lot of people. It was a little bit of the boring side.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Seems reasonable but only a few cabinet secretaries did end up speaking. But get this, notably Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, was not called on once and Minneapolis and the ICE operations were not mentioned by Trump aide Stephen Miller who also wasn't there.
[22:35:06]
Now, while he doesn't always attend these cabinet meetings, Miller's absence is noteworthy, given his recent acknowledgement of a possible mistake when it comes to the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis. Trump also uncharacteristically took no questions. We know that that does not happen all that often. Is the President dodging here, Scott?
JENNINGS: Yes, it's quite rare for him to miss a chance to take questions. Although I do think it's wise when you have a cabinet meeting or a public event to focus on the people who are going to talk about the things that you want to focus on today. So, as a messaging strategy, that's a good thing.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: The ones that are good. But things that are not going well, you don't want to talk to them.
JENNINGS: I think on the Miller piece, look, you know, my view is he is the most -- one of the most, if not the most influential policy advisor in the White House. It's not at all surprising. I know we have some reporting about his conducting this daily call. That's not surprising at all because he is coming up with the President's policies. He wants to make sure they're enacted throughout the whole of government. He has the President's ear.
And look, I've read some things today about he's the one who's the mastermind of all that. That's true on the policy side, but the mastermind of being tough on immigration is Donald Trump. That is the --
PHILLIP: That's true. But I --
JENNINGS: -- that was the impetus of his first campaign and has been all the way through.
PHILLIP: That is true, but I do think that this Stephen Miller pushing for aggressive tactics, pushing for quotas, that is not being talked about a whole lot. And he is responsible for not just what they're doing, how they're doing it, as we were discussing earlier.
MCCAUGHEY: It may be that President Trump wanted to avoid that topic. But clearly, Tim Walz and the Democrats would love to focus on nothing but that topic because it's keeping the focus off the enormous amount of fraud in Minneapolis.
PHILLIP: Whose fault is that?
HILL: Yes, exactly.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: You don't think it's Tim Walz's fault?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: But Betsy, whose fault is it that the Trump administration decided to send 3000 ICE agents into Minneapolis to distract from the fraud investigations that they wanted to bring more attention to? Does that make any sense to you?
MCCAUGHEY: No, I'm telling you that Tim Walz would like this conflict to go on forever to take the heat off him and his administration for allowing that --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Well, this actually has taken the heat. This -- well, Stephen Miller is a genius because he took the heat off of Tim Walz at just the right moment. Put the heat on himself.
(CROSSTALK)
HONIG: If there's massive fraud in Minnesota --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Not if. There's a lot if indictment.
HONIG: Let me just finish. If there is fraud -- if there is fraud in Minneapolis or Minnesota, good. Go get it, get all of it. Arrest everyone, recover every dollar. But you know who does that? The anti- fraud parts of the FBI. ICE --
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: The CBP has nothing to do with -- didn't say they anything to with it, but Waltz is enjoying this conflict on the streets because no one's --
(CROSSTALK)
VARGAS: The governor is enjoying having two citizens of Minnesota die? No.
JENNINGS: I have to say -- I have to say
UNKNOWN: Yes.
JENNINGS: He said today that he thought maybe this was like the next Fort Sumter. And when I, when I -- Walz said that. And previously he had referenced the Battle of Gettysburg. And so, when I hear that kind of language coming out of a governor, this sort of fantasizing about an American civil war, first of all, I don't think he stopped to consider who that makes him in this entire endeavor.
MCCAUGHEY: A Confederate.
JENNINGS: Spoiler alert. And number two, if you wanted more calm, if you wanted a little bit more cooperation, if you wanted to ratchet things down, you would not be referencing the first shots of the civil war and maybe thinking that we're in the middle of another one. You agree or disagree?
HILL: We don't want to get into a debate about political rhetoric. I don't think, because there's--
JENNINGS: Do you like the Fort Sumter language?
HILL: I don't like it but I don't like a lot of things that I hear in our political atmosphere but I'm just constantly baffled by when it is directed at conservatives. They suddenly want to clutch their little pearls and then when they constantly egg and ramp up the --
JENNINGS: So, you do like it.
HILL: No, I don't like it at all. But what I'm saying is --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: Are you clutching your own --
(CROSSTALK)
HILL: No. What I'm saying is, call it on both sides, which I'll never do. See, you only want to, you only want to react.
(CROSSTALK)
HILL: Yes, because you want the pearl clutch on that side, but when your side --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: I don't wear pearls.
HILL: You don't want --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: But you're clutching your own pearls.
PHILLIP: Can I give a concrete example to her point? President Trump sent out a Truth social post saying that Minneapolis was going to face retribution. What does that even mean? Is that appropriate or not appropriate for the President to say that there's going to be retribution carried out against his own citizens?
JENNINGS: My advice to the President, and to Governor Walz and to Jacob Frey, and to every single person is ratchet it down. Stop referencing the U.S. Civil War. Stop calling people Nazis. Listen to Tom Homan.
[22:40:00]
PHILLIP: Stop talking about retribution and --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Stop talking about retribution. You can add that one.
JENINGS: Yes, fine. I just said, I would advise them all to stop ratcheting things. That's the first --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: So -- (CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: Constitutional issue here -- the state of Minnesota including its governor seem to be suggesting that they don't have to abide by federal law, that they're going to have a civil war. Am I correct?
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Let me just make -- let me just make one note on the Kristi Noem front. The "New York Post" editorial board says it may seem unfair, it may mean telling a committed loyalist to walk the plank, but it is necessary. The White House needs to rapidly turn the corner on Minneapolis, and obviously efforts to just change the subject will not reassure nervous swing voters. To move on, the President should act someone. Get smart enforcement moving forward and then go get to selling his -- "
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: The "New York Post" -- the "New York Post" --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- they say that Trump needs to say "you're fired" to somebody and it's very much seems like a lot people would like that to be Kristi Noem.
MCCAUGHEY: Maybe Gregory Bovino who --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: I mean, there are some options.
(CROSSTALK)
HONIG: It's more than just we need a sacrificial lamb here. It's that Kristi Noem destroyed her own credibility and DHS's credibility by coming out within hours of this shooting with outright, provably false claims that Alex Pretti brandished his firearm, would-be assassin --
VARGAS: Who told her to do it?
HILL: Right. Somebody ordered to --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: She said to "Axios" that it was -- she was taking direction from the White House, from Stephen Miller. There's a lot of finger- pointing, though --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Go ahead. Last point.
HONIG: One more person who did not speak today. Quick trivia question. Who's the Attorney General of the United States? Where the hell --
(CROSSTALK)
JENNINGS: -She was in Minneapolis this week Elie, and they arrested 16 people for, you know, over the line activities, supposed protesters who then crossed the line.
HONIG: But she wasn't -- she did not speak today at the meeting.
PHILLIP: To your point. So, two things. She did -- she did get a shout out today but there's lot of reporting about the turmoil from -- CNN has some reporting that there is turmoil in Minneapolis in the -- in the U.S. attorney's ranks where many people are upset. Some are considering resigning. So, there's a lot going on in this administration and a lot of pushback coming from inside and outside.
But next for us, President Trump has long claimed without evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from him. And now the FBI's raid on a Georgia elections office is raising new questions about just how far he's willing to go to prove that lie.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:20]
PHILLIP: Tonight, years after Donald Trump demanded state officials find him the votes, the FBI is chasing down Trump's conspiracy theories in Fulton County, Georgia. Yesterday, the FBI carried out a raid of Fulton County's elections office and took 700 boxes of ballots, among other materials. Officials there are complying with the investigation, and they are adamant that they did nothing wrong.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBB PITTS, CHAIRMAN, FULTON COUNTY BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS: Any honest review of these files will show what every previous review has shown. Voting County elections are fair and lawful, and the outcome of the 2020 election will not change, period.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Now, beginning last night and then resuming in the 5 A.M. hour this morning, the President was on a social media tear. He posted more than 60 times about a wide array of topics and conspiracies, including claims that Obama falsified intelligence and conspired with foreign countries in 2016, that China was behind the stolen election operation in 2020, and that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into voting machines to flip votes from Trump to Biden.
And now, for some reason, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has been tasked with what they're calling an investigation into the 2020 election. What is going on here, Elie Honig?
HONIG: So, great question. Let me tell you what we do know for sure and then what my questions are. We know for sure that in order to do a search warrant, prosecutors have to establish probable cause that a crime was committed. That's not reasonable doubt, but probable cause. They have to write it out and then they have to go to a judge. Or in this case, a magistrate judge, that's fine, who then reviews it and signs off.
So, we know that a magistrate judge looked at this document, we haven't seen the full document, and said, I find it least probable cause that there's a crime committed and that you're likely to find evidence of that crime in the place you search. Couple things that are strange to me. First of all, this warrant came from the Eastern District of Missouri. I don't know what the Eastern District of Missouri is doing investigating Georgia.
Number two, the statute of limitations on any of these crimes is going to be five years. We are five plus years after the 2020 election. We are five plus years after the inauguration. So, I'm not sure how DOJ thinks they're going to make a case.
And then number three, of course, which I will throw open to the table, is nothing on this planet has been investigated more than these 2020 election fraud theories and never come to fruition, been rejected by Congress, by prosecutors, by Bill Barr, by you name it, and it's been rejected across the board.
[22:50:01]
PHILLIP: Is -- this a unhinged conspiracy theory. That is what it is. And it is now being investigated by the White House --
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: -- to legitimize and normalize it? What?
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: I think it's good to investigate. And this is why, at the time, according to "Politico", 68 percent of Republicans doubted the fairness of the election outcome. According to other polls, it was over 70 percent. We want everyone in the country to be confident that elections are fair, that they're honest. And if looking at these documents can restore some of that confidence, what's wrong with looking at the evidence? What's wrong with it?
VARGAS: And what's the basis of the fraud, by the way? I just want to make sure that I understand it. What?
MCCAUGHEY: I didn't sign the warrant. I don't know. But the fact is, what's wrong with looking at the boxes of evidence? Let's have fair people, unbiased people look and call it as they see it. What do you think?
JENNINGS: May I ask a question? If the statute of limitations on all this would have run by now, why would a judge sign off on going in and getting it? Is it possible there are other statutes or other laws or other issues that have been violated that wouldn't have a statute of limitations? HONIG: That's a good question. So I can think of two reasons. One is,
yes, there are some statutes where the limitation is eight years, 10 years. And could be, judge, look, I brought search warrants to judges. Sometimes they just sort of flip them pretty quickly. Now look, this search warrant, we want to go into Fulton County. I hope to heck that that magistrate judge looked at this very carefully.
I should add, this warrant, given DOJ's policies and practices, would have had to go up to the top of DOJ. I mean, you know, this involves a public place, a politically -- a political place. And so, I think it's a safe bet that Todd Blanche, God knows what Pam Bondi's doing, looked at this and approved it.
PHILLIP: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, though, Trump is convinced that he won an election that he lost. And that's what this is about.
VARGAS: That's what this is about.
PHILLIP: Let me show you this picture. This is election denier, Sidney Powell posing with Ed Martin, who is currently working in the administration. He posted this today for a reason because it seems that what he wants to show is that they're back. The election deniers are back in the White House, in influence, when really, everything that they have said and done has been thoroughly discredited.
VARGAS: And I have to tell -- I have to agree with you as somebody who's never -- I cannot wait for the day since I've lived in this country since 1993 where I'm allowed to vote, right? I have not been able to vote because of my immigration status. I think there's nothing more privilege and there's no greater right than to vote.
So much of the fraud issues has been the illegals are voting, right? So much of it has been about all these people that people are saying are somehow poisoning the integrity of the vote. When in reality --
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: I think in Georgia, it's the mail-in ballots. It's not illegals.
VARGAS: But that's been a big part of the narrative about all of this. And I think that's what I find just incredibly tragic.
JENNINGS: Can I ask you another question? If it came out of the Eastern District of Missouri, does that mean that's where the evidence goes and that's where a grand jury would look at it?
HONIG: Typically, yes. You can do a search warrant in another district, right? So, I was here in Southern District New York. Sometimes we needed evidence that was in New Jersey. And you do your search there, but the evidence, yes, would, in this case, go back to Missouri. And if there were to be a charge, again, wait and see, it would come out of Missouri.
PHILLIP: Let me play -- this is former lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, who basically left Republican politics because he wouldn't go along with a lot of this stuff coming from his own party. Here's what he said about this today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEOFF DUNCAN (D) GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: It's just another disgusting attempt by Donald Trump and his administration to try and rewrite history. But I think it's important to recognize Donald Trump does not care, has never cared about protecting democracy or due process or following the law or, just embracing the facts.
But Donald Trump has figured out the cheat code. If he can weaponize the federal government, he can feel like he's getting his way each and every day. And it's wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HILL: So, I think that's everything we're talking about here. The President, this makes him look small. It makes him look petty. And it, frankly, the people that are continuing to go along with this, it shows me they don't have a whole lot of integrity. You mentioned about, why not do it? Because then you can restore some confidence in election integrity. It's only one group of people who think this. And I don't think that group should be capitulated to when it's entirely too much evidence.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: And by the way, by the way, they only believe it because the President told them to.
(CROSSTALK)
HILL: Told them to. Exactly.
PHILLIP: What do you do? You then coddle Trump's lies and perpetuate misinformation.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: You don't know it's a lie until you look at the evidence.
PHILLIP: Well, we do know it's a lie.
(CROSSTALK)
PHILLIP: Are you saying you believe the election was stolen?
MCCAUGHEY: I'm saying I'd like to see the evidence.
PHILLIP: There's been plenty of evidence. They have never presented any evidence of any wrongdoing. It's gone to courts. It's gone to judges. They've all been PROVEN FALSE.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAUGHEY: Why are you objecting to looking at this?
HILL: Because they've looked at it so many times.
MCCAUGHEY: Do you object to looking at this evidence?
JENNINGS: Well, my eyebrows were raised when a federal judge signed off on a warrant.
[22:55:01]
MCCAUGHEY: Yes.
JENNINGS: I mean, that did cause me to wonder, what do they know that they didn't know previously?
PHILLIP: All right, everybody. Thank you very much for being there. Coming up, President Trump just filed a new lawsuit against the IRS. We'll break down his claims next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:59:57]
PHILLIP: Tonight, President Trump and two of his sons are suing the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion.
[23:00:04]
They claim that the government failed to protect their personal and corporate tax information when a former contractor leaked the records to the press. That contractor was sentenced to five years in prison for that. Now, in a statement, Trump's legal team called the contractor a, quote, "-- rogue, politically motivated employee," adding, "-- President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable."
Thank you very much for watching "NewsNight". "Laura Coates Live" starts right now.
