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Jack Smith Testifies on Election, Classified Documents Probes; Vance in Minneapolis with Tensions High Over ICE Actions. Aired 2:30- 3p ET

Aired January 22, 2026 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

REP. JARED MOSKOWITZ (D-FL): OK, or exclamation point. But let's talk also about, you know, the present. That's the past. Let's talk about the present.

These are the guys who created the weaponization committee for the DOJ. So let's talk about the present. Jerome Powell facing investigation, OK?

In fact, you know, we heard about Jonathan Turley, that he's some legal messiah. Jonathan Turley calls the Jerome Powell thing legitimate concerns of retaliation. Lisa Cook, under investigation.

Mark Kelly, United States Senator, under investigation. Adam Schiff, United States senator, under investigation. Eric Swalwell, United States representative, under investigation. Chris Christie, potentially under investigation.

Jack Smith, oh, that's you, under investigation. OK, Miles Taylor, former chief of staff to the United States Department of Homeland Security, under investigation. Christopher Krebs, former director of cybersecurity, under investigation, indicted. James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, it's weird that they indicted John Bolton, but stole his foreign policy.

Accused of crimes, former President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama. Revoked or threatened with revocation of Secret Service protection, Kamala Harris, Hunter Biden, Ashley Biden, the daughter of President Joe Biden, Mayorkas, Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook, General Mark Milley, John Bolton, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the guy Trump gave a medal to.

Security clearance revoked, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken, Jacob Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Mark Zaid, Norman Eisen, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, Andrew Weissman, Hillary Clinton, Liz Cheney, Kamala Harris, Adam Kinzinger, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman. Miles Taylor, I can keep going. Any questions about any of that? We know you don't.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD), RANKING MEMBER, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Will the gentlemen yield for a question?

MOSKOWITZ: I will, please.

RASKIN: Because you have a way of synthesizing that nobody else does, Mr. Moskowitz. Listening to our colleagues today, I wonder if they actually believe any of this would have happened had Donald Trump simply accepted the results of the election?

MOSKOWITZ: You mean like Al Gore when he lost five to four at the Supreme Court?

RASKIN: Yes.

MOSKOWITZ: Yes.

RASKIN: Would any of this -- would the violence have happened? Would the fake counterfeit slates have happened? Threats against Vice President Pence.

MOSKOWITZ: No, none of it would have happened. And Leon Panetta would still have his security clearance, so would John Brennan, so would Michael Morrell, Michael Vickers. I just, I can't get them all in, Mr. Chairman. I can't get -- I have like four more pages of the weaponization of the department --

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Time of the gentleman from Florida has expired.

JORDAN: The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized.

REP. RUSSELL FRY (R-SC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Smith, when was the initial indictment issued on President Trump? August 1st, 2023. Does that sound about right?

SMITH: That's in the election case. That's correct.

FRY: And on that election case, after that, you asked for a trial date when?

JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL FOR THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: I don't recall as I sit here right now.

FRY: January 2024, does that sound about right?

SMITH: That sounds about right.

FRY: OK, so after the indictment, in August, you asked for a January trial date. That's what, five months? Five months? How much evidence did you have? Millions of pages.

SMITH: As I sit here right now, I don't recall the exact.

FRY: -- I think in your testimony, they talked about a number, 13 million pages. Is that a ballpark? Accurate number.

SMITH: I think that was the question asked of me, and as I sit here, I don't have an accurate number.

FRY: So let's just assume that that's true, right? Because you had a bunch of stuff. You had $50 million that you blew through the Treasury on a trial that went nowhere. How many pages per day is that? 100,000? That sound about right?

What if we break that down per hour? It's 4,166 per minute is 70 pages. You like to read, sir? You like to read?

SMITH: I do do.

FRY: Do you read 70 pages a minute?

SMITH: I do not.

FRY: I mean that would be remarkable. So how do you prepare for a trial in five months if you're asking the defense counsel to read 70 pages a minute? How do you do that and prepare a defense and look at all the witness testimony and video evidence that you supposedly had? How do you do that?

You know what's shocking to me? I think that the most, one of the most egregious aspects of this case, Mr. Smith, is that if you get a traffic ticket in Washington, D.C., you're not going to trial in five months. But you want the president, the former president of the United States, to have a trial date with 13 million pages of documents within five months.

I think that's ridiculous, and I think that speaks exactly to what we talk about when we examine not only your record, but the things in this case that are deeply troubling. That this was not the pursuit of facts and law and letting the judge and the jury decide, that this was an exercise in political -- it was a political hit job, timed perfectly against the President of the United States.

Sir, in the Florida case, in the records case, what happened ultimately in that case? What happened ultimately in the the records case. What happened ultimately in that case?

SMITH: What happened ultimately in the case?

FRY: Yes, the Mar-a-Lago records case.

SMITH: I'm going to answer because I don't think this is covered by Judge Cannon's order, we move to dismiss that case pursuant to Justice Department policy.

FRY: No, no, the records case. In Florida.

SMITH: Against Donald Trump.

FRY: The records case in Mar-a-Lago, were you ruled to be -- what was the ruling in that?

SMITH: That was Judge Cannon's ruling, and she ruled my appointment unlawful, and we sought to appeal that, and that appeal was pending at the time that we dismissed the cases.

FRY: So from the very beginning, were you ever confirmed by the United States Senate? SMITH: I have never been confirmed by the United States Senate. I will say that the history supporting my appointment is over 100 years old. Other special counsels --

FRY: Isn't there a statutory appointment? I mean, do you have to be confirmed by the Senate? So I think that's kind of interesting.

But I think the point is, from the very beginning, on the documents case and others, you weren't even lawfully appointed, and that's why Judge Cannon ruled the way that she did. And from the beginning, we talk about that you followed Department of Justice policy, you followed the facts, you followed the law, you followed the Constitution. That's what you have said all throughout this day, parroted by the Democrats, that you have done nothing wrong.

But from the very beginning, you weren't even lawfully -- and you can't even recall who swore you in. So we don't -- as we sit here today, based on your testimony in the transcribed interview, can you tell us who swore you in as special prosecutor?

SMITH: As I said, I know I took the oath of office. I don't recall who swore me in, what I can share with you.

FRY: I don't know, sir, call me naive, but like, that's a milestone career move for you that you get to do this, and you don't remember the circumstances. I just find that a little bit odd. But here's the thing, and I'm going to wrap up quick.

You're unconstitutionally appointed. You breached the 60-day rule, releasing this very partisan attack against the president right before the election. You tampered with evidence in the Mar-a-Lago case that you admitted to in court filings.

You subpoenaed members of Congress and their phone records in violation of the Constitution of current statutes. You didn't even let the court know that these were members of Congress. How are we to assume otherwise that this wasn't political?

Because it absolutely was, sir. And I yield back.

JORDAN: Someone yields back the gentleman from New York is recognized for five minutes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would caution my friend from South Carolina and others against jumping into bed with Judge Cannon, who's been rebuked.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right. We are. We have been monitoring this Jack Smith testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. Quite the partisan back and forth that we have been witnessing.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: It certainly is. A lot of the parts. I would say some of the moments it struck me and even just recently, too.

There was a moment when Representative Nehls of Texas turned around and addressed there were four former Capitol police officers who are in the room there, and he addressed them, saying directly to them that they bore responsibility for the riot. There's been a lot of talk, obviously, if you've been watching with us, about what happened on January 6th, about who was responsible for what happened at the Capitol. But turned around and spoke to them directly and said, this was not President Trump. You were responsible.

That just stands out to me in all of this, right, as there's all this partisan grandstanding, That's a moment that, it made me stop for a minute, Evan.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right, I mean, the entire purpose of today's hearing by Republicans is to say that Donald Trump was not responsible for what happened on January 6th, he was not responsible for the riot, and Jack Smith was a partisan person -- he was a partisan actor by the Justice Department to go after Donald Trump over what happened. And that he had freedom of speech, he had a First Amendment rights to believe that he'd won the election, and he had every right to do everything he did, and that he did everything properly.

And so that moment that you're focusing on is, you know, I think Nehls' his way of responding to what Democrats have been really hammering, which is, you know, this is the violence. This is what happened. We want to remind you what happened.

You're not allowed to rewrite history. And that moment where he says, essentially, you know, it's your leadership that everyone knew that this was going to be a big crowd. It was going to be unruly. And you guys are the ones that failed to prepare for it.

KEILAR: There is an important moment, and we only have a moment here, but the timing, Jack Smith's timing, and you've talked a lot about this, Elie, and this was something he was being pressed on, how quickly he wanted to try the president.

ELI HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: First of all, that moment where the member of Congress addressed and blamed the police officers was an outrage, ridiculous, an embarrassment. I think undermined the points they're trying to make. To your question, Brianna, the last Congressman, we saw point brought up the fact that Jack Smith demanded a trial date four months out, five months out in a case involving 13 million pages of documents. The last Congressman, we saw point -- brought up the fact that Jack Smith demanded a trial date four months out, five months out in a case involving 13 million pages of documents. There is no defense lawyer in the country who can constitutionally prepare for trial and defend his client in that short a timeframe.

The implication was you were rushing to get this in before the 2024 election. Jack Smith did not defend himself, by the way. He didn't say a word about that, which I thought I found straight. Yes, it's true, right?

PEREZ: It's true.

HONIG: Exactly. PEREZ: Before the election.

HONIG: Exactly. And Jack Smith has always maintained this veneer that he never thought about the election. Of course he did. Why would you demand such a quick trial day? And but there's a contrast that some of the Democrats made, which is here you have Jack's -- Donald Trump explicitly calling for prosecutions of people. So some of Jack Smith's conduct gives rise, I think, to a fair conclusion that he was trying to rush it before the election. And Donald Trump is explicitly saying, go after this person, DOJ, go after that person who I don't like politically.

HILL: We're going to pause on that because we also want to follow some breaking developments that are coming out of Minneapolis where the vice president is speaking.

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... encouraging illegal immigrants that one way they can evade arrest is by showing up at a legitimate place of business, making it impossible for these guys to actually enforce our immigration laws. So while I can understand the perspective of somebody who doesn't want to see an arrest happen at their place of work, I can also understand the perspective of our immigration enforcement officers who have to do their job and can't allow a heckler's veto over our immigration enforcement. And so much of what's gone wrong is the failure to do that.

And here's here's the point. We can do a good job of enforcing our immigration laws without the chaos, but it actually requires the cooperation of state and local officials. If you look at blue cities and blue states, red cities and red states, you go to Austin, Texas or Memphis, Tennessee. You go to the state of Texas, obviously a very red state or the state of Tennessee, a very red state.

But you've got blue cities within those states. You do not have this level of chaos. The reason why things have gotten so out of hand is because of failure of cooperation between the state and local authorities and what these guys are trying to do. We have a ton of resources, a ton of ICE agents in this city, right now that I would rather us not have.

I'd love to send those guys home. They're not even doing targeted immigration enforcement. They are trying to protect ICE officers who are doing immigration enforcement because when a crowd surrounds them and these guys call 911, the local officials, the local cops have been told to stand down.

So we have people here who aren't even doing immigration enforcement. They're doing force protection. So that if a rioter tries to ruin the life or assault an ICE officer, they're actually protecting. Now, why doesn't it make more sense for the local cops to get involved in that situation?

Why not just have the mayor or the local officials tell the police officers, you know what? If an ICE officer is being assaulted by a far left agitator, you are invited. You should actually help them. That's what would work out in any normal situation. And that's what happens in nearly every jurisdiction, red or blue, in the United States of America.

The reason it hasn't happened here is because the local officials authorities have been told, stand down, do not help ICE, promote the violence, promote the agitation, but don't do anything to lower the temperature and lower the chaos. That's a problem.

Here's another example of how the lack of cooperation between state and local officials makes it harder for us to do our job and turns up the temperature. Let's say, for example, we have a criminal migrant who is a sex offender. And let's say that we've got to go and arrest that person who, Democrat or Republican, wants a sex offender offender living in their community, I would assume, I would hope that most people don't. But because they're an illegal alien, we don't know their last address.

We may have known their address three years ago, but we don't know their address now. What we'd like to do is talk to local officials and say, you know what? According to the Medicaid rolls, where was the last person this person -- or where was the last address, this person was domiciled or according to a SNAP application, a food stamps application, maybe that could give us insight to where this person is today. Or maybe they had some local court trouble.

We could go to the local courthouse or even the local jail and try to find where this criminal sex offender is today. The local authorities have been told do not cooperate. So these guys are trying to go out and enforce the law, they're trying to arrest sex offenders, but they're trying to do it in an environment where local officials have told, do not help them, do not provide intelligence about where these sex offenders might be.

This is disgraceful. And there are a lot of things that all of us could do better to lower the temperature. But the number one thing that I learned today is that the best way to facilitate reasonable enforcement of the law, but also to lower the chaos in Minneapolis would be for state and local officials to cooperate.

[14:45:00]

Now, I will say, on one final positive note, I actually think that there's some hope, some reason to think that there's going to be better cooperation in the weeks and months to come. I think that because I've talked to some of the local officials here, I think there are reasons to believe that these people are going to step up and actually ask the cops to protect our ICE officers when they're being assaulted. Who are going to ask the local courts to cooperate with getting criminal sex offenders out of our community.

That's a good thing. That's the good news. And that's something I'm going to work on when I get back to Washington. But please, if you're a local official, if you're the mayor of this town, if you have any influence over those people, just tell them to cooperate. Because we could have immigration enforcement operate as smoothly and without the chaos that we see in Austin, Texas, or Memphis, Tennessee, or even rural parts of the state of Minnesota, all we need is a little cooperation. I guarantee we're going to do the best to be professional, to respect

people's rights, to not do anything that we don't have to do in order to enforce immigration laws, but it would make our lives a lot easier. It would make our officers a lot safer, and it would make Minneapolis much less chaotic if we had a little bit of cooperation from the state and local officials. With that, I'll shut up and take some questions. Thank you, guys.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A local school district here is alleging ICE agents detaining a five-year-old after preschool on Tuesday. We've also seen multiple American citizens detained by ICE harassed by the last six weeks. Are you proud of how your administration is conducting this immigration crackdown here in Minnesota?

VANCE: Well, I'm proud of the fact that we're standing behind law enforcement, and I'm proud of the fact that we're enforcing the country's laws. But, you know, you asked a question about this five- year-old kid. I actually saw this terrible story while I was coming to Minneapolis.

We had just left Toledo, Ohio, this morning for an economic messaging event. And I see this story, and I'm a father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy, and I think to myself, oh, my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, little bit more follow-up research.

And what I find is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien, and then they went -- when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. Well, what are they supposed to do?

Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America? If the argument is that you can't arrest people who have violated our laws because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement. That doesn't make any sense. No one thinks that makes any sense.

Now, you know, there are so of these cases like that where if you just understand the context. There have been a number of situations that I've looked into personally where I say, wait a second, we don't want ICE arresting American citizens. They're supposed to be enforcing the immigration laws against illegal aliens. So then I look into it and I find out that the American citizen who was arrested took a swing at an ICE officer.

You can't have that happen. And of course, they have to defend themselves. And of course, they have the right to detain somebody who assaults a law enforcement officer. Now, this is my point.

Do we want these things to happen? Do we want these arrests to be so chaotic? No, we don't. These guys want it least of all. But if we had a little cooperation from local and federal, or excuse me, from local and state officials, I think the chaos would go way down in this community. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President.

VANCE: Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After the Renee shooting, sir, the administration seems --

VANCE: To say, yes, you can go next.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, sorry.

VANCE: No, that's fine. I'll take both.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After the Renee good shooting, sir, the administration seems to -- after the Renee good shooting, the administration seems to suggest that ICE officers enjoyed near complete immunity. But today you told the Washington Examiner that when appropriate, the administration might take disciplinary actions against ICE agents. So is that a change of opinion? And if so, why the change in tone?

VANCE: No, I didn't say, and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into.

We don't want these guys to have kangaroo courts. We want them to actually have real due process, real investigation, because again, sometimes they're accused of wrongdoing. And it turns out when you learn the context, they didn't actually do anything wrong.

But of course, we're going to investigate these things. Of course, we're investigating the Renee Good shooting, but we're investigating them in a way that respects people's rights and then ensures that if somebody did something wrong, yes, they're going to face disciplinary action, but we're not going to judge them in the court of public opinion. I've spoken at length on this particular case. I think that Renee Good's death is a tragedy. I also think that she rammed an ICE officer with her car.

So there are the tragedy here is multilayered. The tragedy is there was a misunderstanding. The tragedy is that Renee Good lost her life.

[14:50:00]

The tragedy is that you have ICE officers who are going to communities where they're worried that if they call 911, no one's going to come to help them. That is what produces this terrible situation, and it's something state and local officials here in Minnesota could solve.

Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you give us a message, George, March for Life tomorrow, especially in regard to the cooperation and values and the shame that kids have to get caught off and all that? And you know, towards that, sir.

VANCE: Well, you know, it is a shame that kids have to get caught up in this. And I'm speaking at March for Life tomorrow. I'm pro-life, and I'm very excited to speak there. I want to talk about local law enforcement.

But, you know, I mean, look, I am -- as a child, I saw people in my family get arrested. It's terrible. It's heartbreaking. It's chaotic. It's traumatic for the kids.

I can recognize that and I can recognize that we got to support these kids while on the other hand saying that just because you're a parent doesn't mean that you get complete immunity from law enforcement. And I think we have to hold both of those thoughts in our head at the same time. We've got to be sympathetic to the kids who are caught up in some of these enforcement actions.

We've also got to say we have to enforce the law without bias, with fairness, but we've got to enforce enforce the law.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Vice President.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:

There is a clash few weeks ago and their mayor said they haven't heard about ICE in the city. And how does ICE kind of work with this what are those times that.

VANCE: You said there was an altercation in Saint Cloud. \

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After the incident, the mayor said that ICE did not communicate with them. They were in the city for a new operation, but she did not know about the operation at the time. Talk a little bit about proactive communication.

VANCE: Yes, it's actually, it's one of the takeaways. I've talked with these guys before we came on the stage, but during our roundtable and some of the other conversations we've had communication, we absolutely want to ensure there's good communication between federal officials and state and local officials. And I'm sure that we can do better on that. We absolutely want to make sure that we are communicating, but that also requires a two-way street. And that's the point that I make about state and local officials.

These guys will absolutely communicate with state and local officials. They'll tell people if they have to do an enforcement operation in a particular municipality. But part of that is they also want to ensure that if they're communicating about their whereabouts, that's not being used as a weapon against them. Sometimes they tell people where they're going and then they find out that their agents' faces are on the, you know, on Reddit or on some social media threads saying, here's this guy.

We know he's going to be at this place at this exact time. So that communication has got to be a two-way street. These guys are going to communicate with business leaders, with local officials, with state officials. We also need the local officials and state officials to do a good the job of protecting people when they're in their communities.

We're not asking, by the way, we don't want any police officer in this community, in this state to help us do immigration enforcement. We've got that. But if a protester shows up and that protester turns violent against our immigration officers, we really, really need the cooperation of our local partners.

We haven't gotten it yet, but I think if we do, we really can lower the temperature.

Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE:

Allowing agents to enter the (INAUDIBLE) but (INAUDIBLE)? How much (INAUDIBLE)?

VANCE: Yes, so I saw that story and the story is like so much that I read in the mainstream media. It's missing a whole lot of context and we appreciate the context. It makes sense. No one is saying, look, there are exceptions. For example, crazy exception. If somebody is fired at from inside a house, they don't need a warrant to go inside that person's house.

There are very narrow exceptions to the warrant requirement where law enforcement officers don't need, you know, a warrant if, for example, they're an imminent threat of their lives. But what we've said and what ICE has proposed, what the Department of Homeland Security really has proposed in the Department of Justice, is that we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law. Now, it's possible, I guess, that the courts say no.

And of course, if the courts say no, we would follow that law. But nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We're talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system. Typically what happens, not always, but typically in the immigration system, those are handled by administrative law judges.

So we're talking about getting warrants from those administrative law judges. And then, of course, with other cases, you get judges or you get warrants from a judge that's very consistent with the practice of American law. I'm sure the courts will weigh in on that, but we're going to enter somebody's house house without some kind of a warrant unless of course somebody's firing on an officer or they have to do something in order to protect themselves.

Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You can't enter with an administrative warrant, or would that be a violation?

VANCE: Well, our understanding is that you can enforce the immigration laws of the country under an administrative order if you have an administrative one. That's what we think. That's our understanding of the law. That's our best faith attempt to understand the law.

[14:55:00]

Again, this is something courts will weigh in on. I won't speak to that. But yes, most immigration law in our country is not done through the criminal system with the judge. It's done through the administrative law system. We're going to continue that practice just as they did in the Biden administration or any other administration.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Was there anything that you heard or saw today that would cause you to the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and then also, did you meet or talk to the agent who was involved in Renee Good?

VANCE: I did not talk to him today. I talked to some of his colleagues. You know, your question on the Insurrection Act is interesting.

I've tried to understand this as well as I possibly could. And my understanding is what the Insurrection Act, what invoking the Insurrection Act would allow the federal government to do is that would allow the federal government to use the military for local law enforcement operations. Right now, we don't think that we need that.

Now, the president could change his mind. Of course, things could get worse. But right now, we think that federal law enforcement officers can do the job of federal law enforcement.

Now, what I do worry about, again, is that the chaos gets worse if more and more ICE agents start getting assaulted. If other law enforcement officers start getting assaulted, that would be a real problem. But again, we have so much federal law enforcement resources here right now. We have so many people here that we do not want to have here. I do not want so many ICE officers in Minneapolis right now.

I mean, good lord, it's really, really freaking cold outside. But they're here not even to enforce immigration laws, but to protect the people from the rioters. That's an absurd state of affairs, and we wouldn't need it if we had a little bit more cooperation from Minneapolis Police Department. Again, the Minneapolis Police Department, my understanding is that the actual beat cops on the ground, they would love to help out, but they're being told by somebody.

I don't know if it's Mayor Frey. They're being told by somebody not to cooperate at all. What kind of a person tells their local police don't protect somebody if they're being assaulted by a rioter? It's crazy, and it's got to stop.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Earlier this week, local law enforcement, accused federal agents of racial profile. Why are there so many U.S. citizens being caught up in this operation?

VANCE: Well, I think your question assumes something that's not necessarily in evidence, which is that when there are American citizens who have been caught up in some of these enforcement operations, very often it is people who have assaulted a law enforcement officer. They're not being arrested because they violated the immigration laws. They're being arrested because they punched a federal law enforcement officer.

That is a totally reasonable thing. Now, to the accusation of racial profiling, you know, look, it's something that we take very seriously. We will take accusations of racial profiling back to Washington. We'll certainly look into them as they come up. But this is not a group that's going around and looking for people who violated the law based on skin color.

They're looking for people who violated the actual law, the law of our immigration system in this country. And so long as we had more cooperation, I think they could do these things in a much more targeted way. They would actually know where some of the bad guys are. I mean, you hear things that are hard to believe, but I've confirmed that they're true.

Sex offenders, sex offenders who were trying to get off the streets, who the local officials won't tell us their last known address. So then the local officials say, oh, my God, these guys are doing widespread targeted enforcement operations, when in reality, we would love to just go to one house. The local officials won't tell us which one house to go to.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Vice President.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Vice President, to that question, the local police chief has had their own off-duty officers, police officers are being targeted because they are a person of color and asked to show their papers. Is that a concern of the administration of the Department of Homeland Security? Local law enforcement says their own officers are being targeted and they describe it as civil rights violations in our streets.

VANCE: So I saw one story about this and one local police officer who said this and look certainly is it a concern? Absolutely. The first thing we have to figure out is whether it happened or not.

And then if it happened, whether there is a good explanation or a bad explanation. And of course, if somebody violated the law, if somebody racially profiled, if somebody violated the rights of one of our fellow citizens, that is something we will take very seriously. What I also would say is that many of the most viral stories of the past couple of weeks have turned out to be, at best, partially true.

So we want to try people based on reality, based on the truth, based on context. We're not going to prejudge people just because of viral social media story that turned out to be half false.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Quick question, both the roundtable that happened. Did you invite anybody with an opposing point of view to get an idea of why people are upset here? And just as a quick follow up, have you reached out to Governor Walz at all in an attempt to turn down the temperature? VANCE: So I haven't talked to Governor Walz on this particular trip. A number of members of our administration, I believe our chief of staff, spoke to the governor and it's been in constant contact with his staff over the past week. We've been in my office in constant contact with people here on the ground in Minneapolis.

There were certainly people at our roundtable with opposing views and like I don't even ...

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