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Minneapolis On Edge After Second Deadly Shooting by Federal Agents; Video Conflicts DHS Account Of Fatal Minneapolis Shooting; Deadly Winter Storm Brings ICE, Snow Bitter Cold To Millions; Trump Says Admin "Reviewing Everything" About Minneapolis Shooting. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired January 26, 2026 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, USA TODAY, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Rights involved. And you also heard from James Comer, another ally of the president who is the oversight committee in the -- the House of Representatives, saying at this point, you know, maybe its Minnesota doesn't want you there. Minneapolis doesn't want there. You should leave.

So you're hearing from more Republicans on Capitol Hill and across the country at this point on the social.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Francesca, I'm going to leave it there because you're right. There are many senators. We are going to be watching this week to see if they raise concerns about somehow pausing funding in the fight over ICE.

Thank you for waking up with us. The "News" is next.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Major breaking news this morning. A brand-new overnight interview. Is the president laying the groundwork for ICE to leave Minnesota?

New reporting of internal White House divisions after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents, withering criticism from across the political spectrum. And new bipartisan demands for an investigation as the video does not match the administration's story.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the deadly freeze. Nearly 90 million people facing extreme cold wash.

Now, after well over a foot of snow fell on a wide swath of the country, this morning, hundreds of thousands of people are without power. The forecast now says as the snow moves out, the brutal cold will still be around four days.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman. Sara Sidner is live in Minneapolis. This is "CNN News Central."

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. I am live here in Minneapolis. This morning, the sorrow and outrage is intensifying here in Minneapolis, and across the country after a second U.S. citizen was shot and killed by federal agents.

Today, two critical hearings are happening in federal court. One on a lawsuit that the federal government has against it to try to temporarily halt Donald Trump's immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

And another is demanding that the federal government must preserve its evidence in the shooting of Alex Pretti. Those two lawsuits happening because there is a huge breakdown in trust between state and local leaders and the federal government.

Now overnight, things ratcheted up here again. Law enforcement using flash bangs to try and disperse protesters who were making noise outside of a hotel where they believed federal agents were staying. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(CAR HONKING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: That is the scene overnight. Demonstrators have been out in the streets in sub-zero temperatures demanding, again and again, that ICE leave this city.

Now, the Trump administration has tripled down on its efforts to put the responsibility on the victim, Alex Pretti, as opposed to its federal agents who shot him. But they have been caught in lies when you listen to what they say and juxtapose it with the video. See for yourself.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEX PRETTI, MAN KILLED BY BORDER PATROL OFFICER: Today we remember that freedom is not free.

SIDNER (voice-over): This is Alex Pretti doing his duty as a nurse at the Veterans Hospital, saying a final goodbye to a soldier.

Pretti, at 37, is now dead. Killed by Border Patrol agents. He's the third person shot by federal agents here in less than a month.

CHRIS GRAY, ALEX PRETTI'S NEIGHBOR: He was an ICU nurse. He was a worker like myself. He was part of the fabric of my community.

SIDNER (voice-over): He says Pretti was also a volunteer observer documenting what ICE was doing in his city. His death, like Minneapolis resident, Renee Good --

RENEE GOOD, KILLED BY A BORDER PATROL OFFICER: I'm not mad at you.

SIDNER (voice-over): -- has caught in chilling clarity on cell phone video from several angles with several witnesses.

NILSON BARAHONA, SHOOTING WITNESS: It wasn't just a physical sound of it. It was like trying to break our spirit, you know. SIDNER (voice-over): A warning, what you are about to see is what Nilson Baraho (ph) saw outside the donut shop.

This is the clearest angle of the shooting as it happened. That is Alex Pretti recording on his cell phone as Border Patrol agents arrive outside the donut shop. He goes into the street waving cars through.

Now, here is how the Department of Homeland Security described how Pretti approached federal agents.

KRISTI NOEM, U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: An individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a nine millimeter semi- automatic handgun.

SIDNER (voice-over): That's not what video shows. It shows federal agents approach Pretti. All he has in his hand is a cell phone, not a gun.

[07:05:04]

Then you see him moving one protester away from agents while agents shove another to the ground. As he tries to help the protester they shoved, agents deploy pepper spray. Three wrestle him to the ground. More join in.

From another angle, you see one agent punching him in the face with a canister of pepper spray in his hand. Pretti is on the ground under them. Nothing appears in his hands.

You can see an officer in a gray jacket walk into frame. Seconds later, agent shout, "he's got a gun." One agent removes a gun from Pretti's belt. He steps away from the scene carrying a firearm seen here in his right hand.

Turns out, state authorities say Pretti has a license to legally carry a gun. But you never see him draw it. Instead, an agent draws his gun while standing above Pretti and fires the first shot.

Pretti survives somehow rising up to his knees. Then, agents fire at least 10 more times. Pretti's body slumps face down the street like us.

But federal authorities weren't done with their accusations against him.

GREGORY BOVINO, BORDER PATROL COMMANDER: This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.

SIDNER (voice-over): Pretti's neighbor, Chris Gray, says that couldn't be farther from the truth.

GRAY: Everything they say about my neighbors is a lie.

(END VIDEOTAPE) SIDNER: That was Chris Gray, the next door neighbor to Alex Pretti. And what you hear from him is that, indeed, Pretti did show up to the scene that ICE or federal agents were in. But he was there as an observer to try and show what was happening on the ground.

He says, all he was doing in the street was exercising his First and Second amendment rights. And it was these officers who took away his inalienable rights.

Let's go now to Andy McCabe, our CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former deputy director of the FBI.

I'm so glad you're here with us to -- to go through some of what we've been seeing, juxtapose with what we've been hearing from federal officials.

First off, when you look at this video and you juxtapose it with what you heard from ICE commander at large, Greg Bovino, who says, A, there was a riot during this time. B, there was a crime scene that he was in during this time.

And C, what we heard from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem that he was holding a gun when he approached the officers. Do you see any of that in the videos?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: No, Sara. You don't see any of it. Not -- not a single shred of what the government is putting out.

When you look -- look at the videos, it's -- it's perfectly clear. Alex Pretti is in the middle of the street. He's not even interacting with the ICE officers.

There, the two other observers are interacting with one ICE officer who is casually walking away from his car. This does not look like a crime scene. He doesn't have a prisoner in his custody that we can see from the video.

The two observers disengage. They cross to the other side of the street. The ICE agent follows them. So it's the ICE agent that pursues this interaction, that provokes this interaction.

Mr. Pretti does nothing more than essentially ministers to the two observers after they've both been assaulted by the ICE officer.

When you see the ICE officer lunge at each one of those observers and hit them in the chest with his two hands, that is not a law enforcement tactic. That's not something that anyone teaches new recruits in a law enforcement academy anywhere in this country. That's an assault.

So Alex Pretti responds to that. He is -- he is looking at the person on the ground who has the -- the red backpack on and he is pepper sprayed for his efforts, for his care, for his attention to his -- his friends or -- or fellow observers. And then, of course, we see the horrible end. He's wrestled to the ground. He is -- he is -- his gun is taken from him. At no time do you ever see Alex Pretti with a gun or any sort of weapon in his hand.

The weapon he has on his hip is taken from him by an ICE agent and then he is killed. And as an unarmed person under the control of five or six different agents. It's none of this is explainable as a valid and lawful law enforcement action in my view.

SIDNER: Andy, I was out on the scene when we saw the BCA, which is the state agency that investigates shootings, particularly officer involved shootings.

[07:10:05]

They were on the scene. And we know that they talked to one of the witnesses that I spoke with as well. So they are clearly investigating, looking for anything that they can.

What we also know is the state and federal authorities, local state, I should say together versus federal authorities. They're not working together. The Feds do not want to work with the state or local authorities.

So, how on earth is anyone going to be able to believe any investigation that comes out from federal authorities who perhaps, if they have body cameras on, will have some different recordings, who perhaps will have some other evidence, and who perhaps will need to be cooperating with all the other videos that are -- are out there, who we now know they did not go to the stores around the area to see if they had surveillance video, but we know the state did?

How does this investigation come out and have people say, I can believe that?

MCCABE: You know, so that's a -- this is a really important question right now because we need to start thinking about what happens next.

I think the first thing that you mentioned here worth emphasizing is, we should not believe anything that comes from the federal government on this issue. We should question every assertion they make. We should ask to see the evidence.

Anytime they make a claim, calling Alex Pretti or anybody else a domestic terrorist, making public claims about what Alex Pretti intended when he came to the protest that morning, they don't know any of this, and yet, they pose everything in the worst possible way.

We know that they've misled the public on these issues before. They have no credibility. We should question everything.

As for the investigation going forward, this is going to be very, very hard for state and local officials to do without access to those pieces of evidence that the federal government might have.

We know they have the firearm that was seized from Alex Pretti because they -- and hours after the shooting, they kind of boasted with pictures of it. We know that the local officials can get -- have -- have obtained some witness testimony, possibly some video coverage from businesses, but, at best, they have an incomplete picture.

So what the state and local government must get is custody of any and all evidence in the -- in the -- that the federal government has, and you're going to have to go to court to require that.

SIDNER: I think it is really significant what you say that we cannot believe a single thing that comes out from the federal government, everything in this instance has to be questioned.

And we all saw for ourselves, as we went through the video frame by frame, there are three demonstrable lies being told by DHS, being told by the ICE commander that you can see did not happen on video.

There is a lot more that will unfold here. People are not backing down. And so far, the Trump administration is not backing down, although we are seeing some potential cracks in their plans to keep the number of ICE agents more triple the number of police officers that exist here in Minneapolis.

Andy McCabe, it is always so nice to have you and your expertise. I do appreciate it.

Kate?

BERMAN: I'll take it, Sara. Just terrific reporting from Minnesota all weekend long into this morning.

New reports of deaths, nearly a million people without power. The deadly ice and snow storm brings a huge part of the country to a near halt with major new threats today of dangerous cold.

New audio just in after private jet carrying eight people crashed overnight. An investigation is underway.

And a former Olympic snowboarder, one of the FBI's top 10 most wanted fugitives in the country is in court today accused of drug trafficking and murder.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:36]

BOLDUAN: So that monster winter storm is moving on out slowly, but it is causing widespread and dangerous conditions that could linger for days. Heavy snow and ice accumulating bitterly cold temperatures that aren't helping anything.

This morning, more than 800,000 people are without power. At least 11 people have been reported killed in weather related incidents.

Snow is still falling in parts of the Northeast today. At least 17 states now saw a foot of snow or more. This is the biggest snow that New York City has seen in years, more than 11 inches measured in Central Park.

And across the South, ice was the major story, major concern. Just look at some of these pictures. Look, what you could see. I think these are from Mississippi. I know where I saw some of the really bad images coming through.

The roads making roads hazardous, this ice, power lines, trees just weighed down and snapping. You have parts of Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana are said to now be dealing with up to an inch of ice.

CNN's Derek Van Dam is in Louisville, Kentucky, which also facing -- I mean, half the country was facing this storm now. What are they dealing with there?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Yes. The -- the damage has been done, right? There's a blockbuster storm starting to wind down with the exception of the New England area with a -- a few light snow showers still in -- in place.

But the damage has -- has been laid out behind it. It's the cold arctic air that is going to lock in the impacts from the frozen precipitation that fell.

[07:20:06]

Just like you talked about a moment ago, over a dozen states recorded a foot or more of snowfall that is significant. And that swath of snow stretched over 1,500 miles as it moved from the Rockies off the New England coastline overnight last night.

So, now what's setting up behind it is what's called a flash freeze. So, there was a brief moment in time, ahead of this cold front, where some locations actually got heavy rain, especially in the Deep South.

And what now has happened is this arctic air has invaded behind it and its drop temperature so rapidly that we see the leftover liquid precipitation on the ground freeze almost instantaneously.

So, black ice is a real concern, not to mention the frozen -- freezing rain that accumulated on places across the interior of the Piedmont into the Appalachians, the Carolinas, Mississippi. These areas won't actually crawl back out from the freezing mark until probably tomorrow afternoon in the south where some of the worst freezing rain took place.

I want to show you just how cold it is right now. We've got extreme cold alerts for over half of the U.S. population.

In fact more than 50 percent of U.S. Americans will actually feel sub- zero wind-chill factors over the coming days. That's how cold it's going to be.

So right now in Chicago, Indianapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, your temperatures, fields-like temperatures, are well below zero. Negative teens, negative 20s in some locations, colder across the upper Midwest.

And there's a look at some of the extreme cold alerts. And you can see the warnings in place with that shading of kind of purple, stretches from the Canadian border all the way to the Gulf Coast. So this is an expansive arctic blast of air.

And what I really want to harp in on is that there's still so many people without power from the ice storm and the winter storm that's now moving off the New England coast line. So -- so the hardest hit areas, northern Louisiana, central and northern Mississippi, into western Tennessee, these areas have about 800,000 customers without power.

You can imagine without power and this type of cold, how dangerous this can be if you don't have access to a warming shelter or a warming center for instance.

So a couple of tips for you if you can. If you're indoors, close your blinds, keep your curtains closed, to keep in the heat, close off rooms, even consider stuffing towels into your doorways to kind of isolate the heat into one singular room and always, always wear multiple layers of loose fitting clothes to keep yourself as warm as possible.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Derek, thank you so much, keeping an eye on all of it while you're on the ground in Louisville, Kentucky. Really appreciate it. Much more to come on the weather and what -- what so much of the country is dealing with now.

Ahead for us, we are also learning new information on what may have caused a private jet to crash in Maine. We've got new details coming in from that overnight.

And there are two high stakes hearings today in Minnesota about the shooting death of Alex Pretti.

Also, with the president doing a new interview with "The Wall Street Journal." Is the Trump administration trying now to shift their message on this deadly, tragic situation?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:43]

BERMAN: All right. Breaking this morning, questions of a presidential retreat or at least a split from some in his administration. An exclusive new interview with "The Wall Street Journal," President Trump refused to say, despite being asked repeatedly, whether he supported the federal law enforcement officers who shot and killed 37- year-old Alex Pretti. That's significant.

He told the "Journal" that they are reviewing the situation. So, what does that mean, not just for the messaging but also the action on the president's immigration crackdown? Let's get right to CNN's Alayna Treene at the White House for the latest on -- on what was a decidedly different tone from the president, at least in that "Wall Street Journal" interview.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. I'll say a different tone from the entire administration actually, thus far, in the wake of that tragic shooting on Saturday.

Look, so far, the Trump administration has been top officials, I should add, like Gregory Bovino, the border commander, kind of in chief, and Secretary Noem of the Homeland Security. All of them have been very defiant and -- and very public in their defiance, I should say, following this shooting, supporting ICE and the operations on the ground and arguing actually, as we've heard from Noem, that Pretti was actually being violent, that he had brandished his weapon, of course, video that -- that we have, shows that that was not the case, all to say a very different tone from what we heard from the president in that interview with "The Wall Street Journal."

I do want to return to some of what you said just to reiterate what the president told the "Journal." He would not say, when asked twice the "Journal" said whether the officer who fatally shot Pretti had -- had been, you know, in the wrong or whether he was acting appropriately.

He said that they were going to be reviewing this case and -- and looking at the answer, so not coming out with a predetermination there.

The other thing that was important, I think, to note is that he said eventually they will be removing ICE in Minneapolis. It's hard to know, of course, what that actually means. He did not give a timetable, but in my conversations with White House officials throughout the weekend, John, I was told that for now, they want ICE to continue operating. And there has been some sense inside the White House that pulling ICE out at this point would almost look like a capitulation.

[07:30:00]

I'll just say that the White House and Trump administration officials are very clearly trying to figure out how to move forward here. They recognize the optics are not good.