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DHS Says Woman Killed in Ice Involved Shooting in Minneapolis; Senators Receive Closed-door Briefing on Venezuela Actions; Rubio Outlines Plans for U.S. To Control Venezuelan Oil Revenue. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired January 07, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: -- law enforcement here and as Governor Tim Walz said, involving an ICE agent. We are learning to -- trying to learn as much as we can. But let me just get you another picture of the crowd here, because this is a city where these George Floyd riots are not far in the rear view mirror.

And what I keep hearing from people in this area is they say, if you thought that was bad, this city is about to explode. And so, the line that Minneapolis police are towing right now is to try to keep this calm and not inflame the crowd because they do not want another major eruption. They cannot have a repeat of the George Floyd riots.

And so right now, what you're seeing is, it is loud, Dana, but this is very controlled. We've seen a lot of flare-ups between the public and law enforcement in Chicago, for example. This is a very controlled scene, although it is noisy. And we're continuing to try to find out more about what happened. But, Dana, that's the latest here.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT AND ANCHOR OF 'INSIDE POLITICS': Whitney, you probably can't hear yourself think because it's so loud there. It's a little hard for us to hear what you're saying because, obviously, there are a lot of people there who are quite angry.

If you can hear me, and perhaps it's too early to know the answer to this, but it sounds like officials are being quite careful when they just say a shooting involving a federal agent. Does that mean that somebody who they were going after, who ICE was going after, was shot? Was there a shootout? Or we don't know.

WILD: We don't know. We don't know yet.

BASH: OK.

WILD: I don't know if you can hear me, but it's starting to get really spicy. So let me give you context of what is going on here. Dana, can you guys hear me?

BASH: Yeah, we can. I just --

WILD: I'm going to pull my microphone a little closer to my mouth. BASH: OK.

WILD: OK. That's Police Chief Brian O'Hara. Right now, the crowd is really directing their frustration that direction at the moment. People here are really angry. We're hearing them yell at the Minneapolis Police Department. They don't feel like the Minneapolis Police Department is serving the Minneapolis voters, the Minneapolis taxpayers right now.

And so right now, what you're hearing is a lot of anger directed toward the local law enforcement here, even though they were not involved in this shooting, as far as we know, Dana.

BASH: All right, Whitney, we're going to let you go. Obviously, it is interesting that you're saying that their anger is towards local law enforcement, I would imagine, in addition to federal law enforcement, ICE agents in particular.

WILD: Right.

BASH: So, we're going to let you go. We're going to let you do some reporting. Stay safe, and we will get back to you as soon as you get more. Thanks so much for your terrific reporting, Whitney.

And up next, I'm going to speak with one of the Senators inside that closed-door briefing with Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth on Venezuela, one of the only combat veterans in the United States Senate. Stay with us.

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[12:37:09]

BASH: Welcome back to "Inside Politics." As we've been reporting on the show, Senators just received a closed-door briefing from Trump administration officials about its plans in Venezuela, including what's going on right now, a seizure of oil ships in and around there. Joining me now is one of the Senators in that briefing, Senator Tim Sheehy, a Republican from Montana, also serves on the Armed Services Committee and is a retired Naval SEAL.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate you being here. What did you learn from the briefing?

SEN. TIM SHEEHY, (R-MT) ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE: Well, obviously, it was a classified setting, so we can't be specific. But I think, doing something that's unusual in this town, I'll try not to be partisan and political. I think speaking as Americans, we can all agree bipartisan that for decades, Venezuela has presented a stability issue for our hemisphere. Democrats, Republicans have roundly condemned the Chavez and Maduro regimes, which have not just been a hub for narco terrorism, that I think it's important we call it what it is, narco terrorism, not just drug-running and drug-dealing, it is intentional destabilization of our hemisphere for profit with drugs as weapons.

But in addition to that, which is arguably more pernicious and I think even more bipartisan, is Venezuela's positioning of itself as kind of the money launderer of the entire rogue regime network of the entire world. Whether you're talking about the IRGC, the Iranian operations, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels, Russia, North Korea, China, Venezuela has kind of positioned itself in that rogue state terrorist actor triangle with their oil trades, with the ghost fleet from Russia, as we've seen today, more seizures from our great special operations community. That network of finance has been incredibly destabilizing, and it's been empowering to folks like Vladimir Putin and the Iranian regime.

So, I think it's very important that we address that --

BASH: Yeah.

SHEEHY: -- not as Republicans or Democrats, but as Americans.

BASH: Maduro is not there anymore, but his regime is still very much in charge, that regime that you just described doing pretty bad things.

SHEEHY: There's no question. I think that's an important point you make, and thank you for making it, which is this was not a regime change. And I think that was very intentional on the part of Secretary Rubio and the president which is, as we've learned the hard way, as I've learned the hard way, having served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, regime change is a hard thing to do and nation-building is a hard thing to do. And when you take out a regime, you then own the problem, and you have to be part of that reconstruction process.

BASH: But don't we own the problem? I mean, you have a President of the United States saying (inaudible).

SHEEHY: We absolutely do. We absolutely do. But I think the point is replacing an entire governance apparatus, as despicable as it may be, presents a different set of challenges from just a core stability standpoint than one of governance. And I think when we talk about what that oil fleet means, that's the lifeline, that's the lifeblood, that's the economic existence of the state of Venezuela. And it's things as simple as sanitation and sewage and electricity and police forces on the ground. This isn't going to be perfect, but let's remember, we're at Day 4 here.

The intent is to put guardrails around this regime, the current regime, with the vice president ascending to the presidency, leave in place the regime, and hopefully, as we've heard the president say, eventually hold elections in the relatively near future where, as we know, Machado has led an opposition movement that was democratically elected.

[12:40:00]

But being an opposition movement, as you all know in D.C., is very different than governing. And simply parachuting that movement and immediately into an administration, into bureaucracy that they aren't running is not just going to probably fix the situation, it may make it worse. So I think what Secretary Rubio has done very wisely is to create a structure within which we can enforce behavior from the current regime through oil sanctions, through the naval quarantine, and we're seeing that now, which is going to prevent their ability to fund Russia's war in Ukraine, to fund Iranian terrorist organizations, and continue to poison America with drugs.

BASH: Secretary Rubio did come out in between briefings and spoke to reporters, and he went through what he called three phases, which he probably did in some way behind closed doors, until he got to the third phase, which was talking about a transition in the government eventually. I assume he means elections. It was all about oil.

SHEEHY: Right.

BASH: Are you comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with the -- and not only was he talking about oil, I should say that, at the White House, the press secretary also talked about oil and talked about it in the following order, said oil to benefit Americans and Venezuelans.

SHEEHY: The simple fact is when you look at the financial structure of Venezuela, good or bad, good or evil, whatever you want to structure Venezuela as, oil runs that country, and oil -- they have selected to use oil as their point of leverage to harm our country and the rest of the world. Again, Russia, through their ghost fleet, uses Venezuela to offload their light crude to mix with Venezuelan heavy crude, which makes their products saleable on the world stage.

Iran, Iranian-backed proxy groups, use the Venezuelan oil trade as a way -- as a proxy method to --

BASH: So was this whole operation about oil? This whole mission?

SHEEHY: I think the whole operation was about Venezuela, and Venezuela's destabilizing effects on killing tens of thousands of Americans a year with drugs, and through financing rogue regimes like the war in Ukraine, like Iranian-backed terrorist groups. And therefore, oil has been their chief currency to do so. So as the Democrats, getting partisan again now, have demanded we do any and all things to stop Putin's war in Ukraine, which is right.

Putin's war in Ukraine has been a terrible, terrible act of despotism. But if we really want to stop Putin's war in Ukraine, we need to choke off his money supply, and his chief financing capability is Russia's oil trade. And through our sanctions on Russia's oil trade, the ghost fleet is the only way he can access that, and Venezuela has been a key component of that.

BASH: The Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, said today that it will cost tens of billions of dollars to get the oil infrastructure up and running. I know that the president is hoping that U.S. oil companies foot the bill and they work on the rebuilding there, but not so sure that that's going to happen, according to the oil executives themselves. Should American taxpayers be paying for Wall Street to build oil infrastructure in Venezuela?

SHEEHY: I don't think that's the intent. And some of your previous guests have talked about America stealing Venezuela's oil. That's actually not what's happening at all.

BASH: That's what I think Senator Murphy said.

SHEEHY: Yeah, perhaps Senator Murphy. The intent is to use Venezuelan oil revenues, that they currently have oil in storage, use those revenues to rebuild the infrastructure in Venezuela and fund the operations of the government. So instead of letting them take Venezuelan oil, which is what they were doing --

BASH: Yeah.

SHEEHY: -- and selling it and smuggling it on the world stage to fund terrorist operations and drug-dealing cartels, we're going to have to use Venezuela's oil to rebuild the oil infrastructure in Venezuela to, yes, benefit the people of Venezuela (ph).

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: And you're comfortable with America being in charge of that, just taking control of the entire process? As a United States Senator, you're good with that?

SHEEHY: Well, I don't think we're taking control of the process.

BASH: Well, that's what the president said.

SHEEHY: I mean, we're four days in.

BASH: Yeah, but that's his goal.

SHEEHY: Sure, but in fairness to the president, which I don't expect the media to treat the president fairly, but in fairness to him, we're 96 hours into this. So to expect to have a functioning republic with a free-market economy four days into this, I think is a little bit ridiculous.

So we're four days in. A narco-terrorist-indebted criminal has been arrested and removed which, by the way, I mean, Zohran Mamdani wants to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu when he lands in New York City. So to say that arresting a foreign leader who's been indicted on crimes is somehow a Republican issue is a little bit silly.

So, let's just be realistic about the fact that Venezuela has been a continual destabilizing force in our region, killed tens of thousands of Americans, and moreover, has served as a core component of rogue regime financing globally.

BASH: Yeah. I just quickly want you to listen to what Stephen Miller has said in describing what he and the president have said is a new foreign policy strategy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHEN MILLER, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF: We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.

[12:45:00]

These are the iron laws of the world --

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: But are you saying that --

MILLER: -- since the beginning of time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So he's effectively saying that the U.S. can step on smaller countries when the U.S. wants, how it wants. The way you have described what the U.S. is doing with regard to Venezuela and how it affects the geopolitical situation is a lot different than the people who are inside the White House, like Stephen Miller, saying it's about brute strike, and we're going to use it.

SHEEHY: I don't think that's a fair characterization of what Stephen said. I think what Stephen was outlining is exactly what I outlined, which is other nations in the world, like Putin, like China, like North Korea, Iran, and rogue states, have been using these levers of power for years.

And frankly, we've been playing T-ball as they've been playing pro- baseball. We've been shooting Nerf guns. They've been shooting rifles. And the reality is, if we're going to take on these rogue regimes that are ascendant around the world, from China encircling Taiwan to Russia invading Ukraine and Chechnya flexing in Syria, we're going to have to start playing hardball. And hardball means hitting them where it hurts. And where it hurts is an illicit oil trade that's funded the rogue operations for years. This is what this is. It's a good move for the world.

BASH: Senator Tim Sheehy, I really appreciate you coming in. Thank you for being here, and I should say thank you for your service. Appreciate it.

SHEEHY: Thanks, Dana.

BASH: Coming up, we are going to take you back to Minneapolis because we're getting new details on that shooting that officials are saying involves a federal law enforcement agent. You still see there is some chaos on the ground in and around where protesters are and where apparently this actually took place. We are told a person, one person has died. More details after a break.

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[12:51:06]

BASH: We're following breaking news in Minneapolis, where DHS says a person involved in an ICE shooting has died. What you're looking at are live pictures amid a pretty heavy presence of police and law enforcement agents, also bystanders who have been protesting what has been going on there. Whitney Wild is there on the ground. Whitney?

WILD: Dana, we now know what Homeland Security is saying officially, that that person who was involved in the shooting has died. Here's the statement they put out a few minutes ago.

Today, ICE officers in Minneapolis were conducting targeted operations when rioters began blocking ICE officers, and one of those violent rioters weaponized her vehicle, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers in an attempt to kill them, an act of domestic terrorism. An ICE officer fearing for his life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement, and the safety of the public, fired defensive shots. He used his training and saved his own life. You can see people are very upset, just hearing what Department of Homeland is saying.

BASH: Whitney, we can't hear you. Whitney, I'm just going to interrupt you. We can't hear you. We want you to stay safe. We appreciate you giving us that. Go ahead. You want to go again?

WILD: Yeah.

BASH: OK, we can hear you better now.

WILD: That is what. OK, the Department of Homeland Security is saying that this is the direct consequence of constant attacks -- I can't --

BASH: You know what, Whitney? I'm going to take it back from you.

WILD: Let's let the situation settle for a minute. We need to come back.

BASH: I'm going to take it back from you. Thank you so much for being there. Again, just be safe, please. I'm going to go now to Priscilla Alvarez, who is also talking to her sources, and because it was obviously hard to hear, and it gives you a sense of -- certainly a sense of what's going on, on the ground there, right, Priscilla?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah.

BASH: What Whitney was reporting is that DHS has confirmed that an individual has died. The alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. ICE officers who were hurt are expected to make full recoveries. Can you fill in the blanks, Priscilla?

ALVAREZ: Yeah, Dana, let's set the scene here. So in Minneapolis right now, the Department of Homeland Security has surged thousands of agents. There are around 2,000 agents that have been deployed to the state of Minnesota, and there have been ongoing operations, especially in Minneapolis.

So that is what has been ongoing in that city and in that area. And this morning, the Department of Homeland Security says that they were conducting, what they call, these targeted operations. That is to say that they went out to a location, they had a target in mind. Over the course of that operation, according to their statement, ICE officers and one of these violent rioters they're calling weaponized their vehicle. This is according to their statement. And they also go on to say, attempting to run over our law enforcement officers. And they call this an act of domestic terrorism.

And they say that is what prompted an ICE officer, who they said was fearing for their life, to fire these defensive shots. And this alleged perpetrator was hit and is deceased. This is according to the Department of Homeland Security. I have asked the Department of Homeland Security if this was a U.S. citizen, because we do not know the status of this individual who was in this vehicle.

Now, of course, we have seen in multiple cities that the actions of ICE, as they carry out their operations, has prompted protesters and rioters at some of these operations. But generally, I will say, Dana, in talking to my sources over the course of the morning, there are a lot of questions here about these defensive shots the Department of Homeland Security is talking about. Because generally, the policy for ICE officers to use any -- to shoot would be if the subject poses "an imminent threat of serious injury and/or death."

[12:55:00]

So there are a lot of questions here as to what prompted that defensive shot outside of the use of the vehicle. And it is these types of questions that would prompt also an internal investigation at the Department of Homeland Security, typically, to try to get the answers as to what exactly unfolded here for there to be a fatal incident that includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

And again, it is Immigration and Customs Enforcement that was involved here, according to DHS. Recall that there are multiple agencies that are on the ground doing these immigration enforcement operations. And even photos of the scene showed, at least after the fact, that it was both ICE on the ground, as well as local police department and U.S. Border Patrol, which has similarly been deployed to Minneapolis to continue the operation.

So we are still trying to seek more answers here, Dana. But at the outset, what we know is that there was an ICE-involved shooting, that there has been a fatality. We're trying to get what the status of that person was, if they were a U.S. citizen, but, of course, against the backdrop of this massive immigration operation.

BASH: Yeah. Priscilla, thank you so much for that reporting. If you out there are wondering, like I am, what's going on with Whitney Wild in Minneapolis, she is fine. She's talking to some of the people there who are pretty exercised and she'll, I'm sure, be back on later today, probably after a break.

On that note, thank you for joining "Inside Politics." "CNN News Central" will start after a quick break.

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