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Minnesota Officials Call for Access to ICE Shooting Case Info; Minneapolis Mayor: Vance Claim of Absolutely Immunity is "Ridiculous". Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired January 09, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

MAYOR JACOB FREY (D-MN): -- speak for the trajectory. They are clearly driving crime up. Up until last night, we hadn't had any shootings in this city other than ICE. Our city is safe. Our city is welcoming. They are making it less so.

And so, it is a massive issue that they continue to exert their presence in Minneapolis and beyond. By the way, it's not just our city that is feeling the impact. I know that there are a number of legislators behind me that can speak to that.

This administration has also said that they're very pro-business. That's also garbage. I don't have a specific statistic other than anecdotal evidence to point to, but they have had a massive and detrimental impact on a number of corridors throughout our city, including 80 percent reductions in customer base along East Lake Street and many other corridors throughout the city. And so, bad for business, bad for safety, bad for unity, bad for democracy, and bad for this republic. We want them out.

Let's go over here and then go over there.

So, the question is, if there's no full independent investigation of this shooting, what will the effect be? I mean, I think it further undermines trust in government. You know, the quickest way that you erode trust in government is to refuse to enforce and hold accountable people on laws that you pass. There are laws that are around us. There are standards that are around us. They should have no concern about having a full and transparent investigation here. See where that investigation leads. Look at the facts, collect the evidence. And the fact that they are some -- for some reason concerned about having other, by the way, police involved, other law enforcement involved through the BCA, that is wildly concerning.

We're not asking to be at the table in this investigation here. We do think that people that have some willingness to see things clearly are.

Well, I think we've got to get to a point here where we're not trusting everything that they're saying. And I think you guys are there at this point. I mean, I think he also asserted that because you work at the federal government, that you somehow have absolute immunity from committing crimes. That's not true in any law school in America, whether it's Yale or Villanova or anywhere else. That's not true.

If you break the law, if you do things that are outside the range, outside the area of what your job responsibilities require, and this clearly seems to be at the very least, at the very least, this is great. At the most is what you heard people say back here. This is a problem and it should be investigated.

Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A couple of questions for you. First, have you heard personally anything from the Trump administration or the president himself? And also, the administration is pointing to some of your comments right after the shooting as turning up the temperature in this city. Yesterday you did see some protests that, you know, turned volatile at times, there was pepper spray, there was tear gas. Do you stand by your statements to tell ICE to --

FREY: Yes, they stand by their statements. Do you stand by your statement?

CROWD: Yes.

FREY: I stand by my statements. We stand by our statements. I'll look back to what I said. What I said was it was reckless abuse of power. Yes, it was a reckless abuse of power. I said that what the narrative that the administration was pushing in the immediacy following this shooting was garbage and false and BS. It was. I stand by every one of those.

And, you know, this notion of inflammatory comments. I mean, come on, guys. You know, I dropped an F-bomb. I dropped an F-bomb. They killed somebody. Which one of those is more inflammatory? I'm going with the killing somebody. I'm going to do like a couple more and then I'm -- I'm sure there's some other people behind me, too. Yes.

Yes, that seems -- the way you put it, it's pretty grim. What you just said, and I think to repeat for everybody, Donald Trump said that Renee ran the ICE agent over.

[10:35:00]

Don't take my word for it. Don't take their word for it. Watch the video from every single angle. I mean, the ICE agent walked away with a hip injury that he might as well have gotten from closing a refrigerator door with his hips. He was not injured. I've seen worse injuries from doing that.

And so, give me a break. No, he was not ran over. He walked out of there with a hop in his step. And so, we just got to get to the point where we're at least operating from, hey, this is like we're looking at it on the video screen. This is what we're seeing. Can we all see that it wasn't run over? And then, you know, J.D. Vance, this concept of absolute immunity is pretty bizarre.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How concerning is that (INAUDIBLE) --

FREY: Very concerning. It's extremely concerning. That's why we're asking for the BCA to be part of the investigation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have time for about two more questions. Some (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

FREY: You want to answer that? I don't know the exact timeline, but I imagine the answer is yes. Go for it.

STATE. REP. JAMIE LYONS (D-MN): Jamie Lyons, state representative of Minneapolis, representative. We -- there have been instances in the past where the FBI has shared information weeks after or even months after. It would be much better if the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension were able to be involved right now. There is time sensitive evidence. There are memory lapses that happen if you aren't able to interview witnesses right away. And so, they were invited by the FBI to participate in the investigation jointly originally, and then for some reason they decided to walk away.

We are asking for their full participation as the FBI intended originally. They were clearly told by somebody that they couldn't participate anymore. And when you have the president of the United States, the vice president, the FBI director, director of Homeland Security already coming to conclusions, and then they are told on the ground that they can no longer be involved with local investigators, that causes a lot of concern. And to us, time is important, but they should be involved in the investigation at any time that they are allowed to be.

FREY: So, the question is whether I can talk or describe about interactions with Ms. Good, who she was as a person. It would be completely inappropriate for me to do so because there are other people that really knew her, and I did not. Thanks, everybody.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: You have been listening to a very fiery press conference there in Minnesota from local officials, including the mayor, who reiterated what he said shortly after the shooting, the ICE shooting of Renee Good, saying that it was a reckless abuse of power. He said that ICE has been making the city less safe. He said it's bad for business in the city and bad for unity. And he also responded to Vice President J.D. Vance's claim that that ICE officer involved in the shooting has absolute immunity, saying that is not true, and it was a bizarre claim.

But overall, what the officials were calling for is for the FBI to cooperate and share evidence, share information in the investigation, because the reporting from the ground there in Minneapolis is that local officials are being blocked from that investigation, that federal investigation.

So, I want to bring in John Miller to discuss this a little more, because the officials there on the ground, John, were making the case that by the local law enforcement officials being blocked from the investigation, it hurts trust, it doesn't allow for justice for Renee Good, and it blocks their ability to potentially bring state charges. What is your reaction to that? JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, I think the point they're making, and I think the mayor said it in a very interesting way, he said we don't want a seat at the table, you know, because, you know, we're very impassioned about this, and these are political statements, but we want a seat at the table for the state entity, not the Minneapolis, the Minnesota entity that has expertise and experience in investigating law enforcement-involved shootings, so that we can parallel the FBI investigation, and so that it can be viewed by people as an independent investigation, not one closed off from the public or without a public-facing report, something that our experts and prosecutors have access to and agree with the conclusions of, and that is where they're saying they are blocked out.

[10:40:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I want to play a clip. This is what the vice president, J.D. Vance, said yesterday, and then we got a lot of response from the Minneapolis and Minnesota officials who were there today. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: The precedent here is very simple. You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement, and you have a federal law enforcement officer engaging in federal law enforcement action. That's a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right. So, they were insisting, the Minneapolis officials, including the mayor, that is ridiculous that a federal official has absolute immunity from potentially being charged with any crime because the official was acting as a federal official. What's your response to that?

MILLER: So, it's not absolute immunity, and this is something that's been examined a number of ways in a number of situations, but what they have is qualified immunity, which is if they were acting in their official capacity and in good faith, even if things went terribly wrong, if the decisions that the officer made in those circumstances were reasonable based on his perception of events, and that another officer, another reasonable officer of similar training would have made the same decision, then that's where that immunity applies.

If it's determined that a crime was committed, then of course that officer would be subject to federal prosecution. But here's where the argument gets really interesting. The federal government and states, states' rights, federal government, are two separate sovereigns. There is nothing to prevent the State of Minnesota from launching a criminal investigation into this.

Now, if they decided to bring a charge against this officer at the end of that investigation based on a showing of probable cause to believe a crime had been committed by that officer, the federal government would challenge that. They would challenge it on the supremacy clause. They would challenge it on the immunity in that he was acting in his official capacity, but that would have to be litigated through the federal courts.

Frankly, the Minneapolis Bureau of Criminal Apprehension could start right now with their own investigation, and they might do that. But what they're asking for is, let us join the investigation with the FBI. Let us have a seat at that table, and let us have access to the same evidence so we can come to either the same or a separate judgment.

BROWN: So, just to follow up on that, because as you say, they could do their own thing, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but what would the boundaries be? For example, a witness such as the partner in the car of the victim interviewing her. If the FBI has already interviewed her as part of its investigation, can they also go and interview her? What are the boundaries and restrictions right now?

MILLER: So, there's no restrictions, but I mean you hit the bullseye here, which is right now they could go out and collect all the videos, collect videos from up and down the street, ring cameras, and other sources. They could interview all of the civilian witnesses. They could document all of that, but they wouldn't have access to interview the agent, assuming that the federal government would block that, or the partners, or the other agents that saw this from other angles, or obtain the radio traffic off the ICE agent's radio frequency, or some of all the other things that would be available to the federal government that they might not provide to those investigators.

What they're asking is, we want access to everything so we can get a 360-degree view, but they could go forward and begin their own probe if they decided that it had come to that.

BLITZER: How unusual is it that if a state investigatory body, in this case the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, we heard a lot about the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in this news conference, how unusual is it if they're launching an investigation for the federal government to refuse any cooperation with them?

MILLER: It's unusual. This is, you know, I've been through this with the New York City Police Department involving cases where federal agents were involved in shootings here. The district attorney of whatever county that occurred in was involved across the country. That has been the practice, and it's not always consistent. Sometimes the district attorney and the local authorities will say, this is your shooting, it's your problem, you handle it, but there are cases where they say, this happened in our town with our people, and we want to basically ride along with you as we look at whether or not this was proper.

In this model they have chosen a path which is neither to, I mean the government has said they want to be a part of it, the local government, and they've said yes, the first day, and then no the second day.

[10:45:00] BROWN: And we heard the mayor sort of double down on saying that what happened here was a reckless abuse of power. I wonder what you think about that, John Miller, as we have all been talking about, it's early days, this investigation is not complete, there's still a lot to learn here, right?

MILLER: Well, there is. And I mean, I'm glad you brought that up because in one side of this press conference they said, you know, how dare the federal authorities and the politicians to go that this was a terrible crime and that the officer is -- I'm sorry, that this was a proper procedure and that the officer is innocent and he was following his training and there's nothing to see here.

And then two minutes later, elected officials in Minneapolis get up and say, we want him immediately arrested and charged with murder. What happened to the idea of let's engage in the fact-finding first, but that goes to their argument that they want to be a part of it.

BROWN: Yes, and one more follow-up question to you, John, is just this question of immunity. And you heard the vice president yesterday sort of make this case that, well this officer involved in the shooting has had a prior incident where he was dragged by a car, I believe it was something like 30 feet, you know, basically making the case give this guy some slack. Could that factor in to any determination here in terms of immunity, his prior experience and how that might have impacted his action in that moment?

MILLER: Yes. So, not in terms of immunity, but it could factor in as -- the thing that's given the most weight in these cases is what was the officer's decision based on. And that relies on not what the video shows, not what the body camera shows, but what was the officer's perception at the time that he made the judgment to fire that weapon.

And in a case like this, the officer might say, I had just been through the experience on June 7th in Bloomington, Minnesota, where I had been dragged a hundred yards by a car that was literally trying to shake me off as I was stuck in the back window. He might say that I saw my partner hanging onto this vehicle as it lurched forward, and I thought that was about to happen to him, so I took action. That's the kind of thing that he could, if he were testifying, let's say in a trial, add in as his own perspective that formulated that decision as to why to take that shot.

BROWN: You were a hundred yards, just to correct myself, a hundred yards. Yes.

BLITZER: One quick question before I let you go, John. The fact that the Secretary of Homeland Security has publicly suggested that this woman was engaged in domestic terrorism, that she was a terrorist, even before there's any real investigation, what does that say to you?

MILLER: That says that they have created a new definition of domestic terrorism, which is the definition that they are applying, and you know, there are -- there's a real skew between sides in this. There have been 13 shootings involving agents involved in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown since it started some time ago. Five of those involved people who were trying to get out of car stops like this. Three of those involved people who were filming or documenting or impeding or harassing agents.

So, this is not an isolated shooting, but what they've now defined is that people who are protesting, following, blowing whistles, impeding, are affecting these efforts, and therefore they are domestic terrorists. That's what everybody else calls protesters. So, if that is the new definition, that's something new.

BLITZER: Yes.

BROWN: All right. John Miller, as always, great to have you on to give us perspective of this. We appreciate it.

BLITZER: Very important story we're monitoring. Thanks for me as well. Also coming up, deadly demonstrations, almost 50 people killed as internet and phone lines are cut in Iran. Anti-government protests sweeping the country right now. We have breaking developments just coming in to the Situation Room. We'll be right back.

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[10:50:00]

BLITZER: We'll of course stay on top of all the breaking news coming out of Minneapolis. Much more on that coming up. But there's also important economic breaking news we're following right now. Hiring slowed here in the United States at the end of last year as employers added just 50,000 jobs in December. That's fewer jobs than many analysts were expecting.

BROWN: Let's go live now to senior reporter Matt Egan in New York. Matt, you were digging through the numbers here. What does all of this signal about the state of the economy right now?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Wolf and Pamela, it was a mixed ending to what was a lousy year for the job market. The good news here is the unemployment rate. It did fall more than expected to 4.4 percent in December. The bad news, though, is that job growth, it does remain soft. As you mentioned, just 50,000 jobs added in December. That's barely enough for what's required to keep things stable in the job market, and we continue to get negative revisions to prior months.

Both November and October were revised lower. You can see on that chart, October was revised sharply lower during the government shutdown. The U.S. economy lost 173,000 jobs in October. According to the latest estimates from the government, that's the most of any months since late 2020 during COVID-19.

Now, when we look at the sectors, health care continues to be a source of demand for workers, adding another 38,000 jobs in December, leisure and hospitality adding workers as well. But, unfortunately, that's kind of it when it comes to job growth. A lot of the economically sensitive sectors, they're losing jobs. Manufacturing lost 8,000 jobs in December. That's the eighth straight month where that sector has lost jobs, construction losing 11,000 as well. So, this is more evidence that that blue-collar jobs boom that President Trump promised is just not happening, at least not yet. And when you zoom out, 2025, it was a very weak year for the U.S. economy when it comes to job growth. Less than 600,000 jobs were added.

[10:55:00]

That might sound like a lot, but it's the worst since 2020 during the COVID-19 recession. And if you exclude recessions, this is the worst year of job growth since 2003.

So, look, bottom line, the job market doesn't seem to be imploding right now, but it's clearly not firing on all cylinders. Economist Gregory Daco, I think he summed it up best. He told me he thinks this is not a red alert situation for the job market, but he said it's still very much in an orange alert situation. Back to you, guys.

BROWN: All right. Matt Egan, thank you so much. Wolf.

BLITZER: And coming up right after the break, we're monitoring, as we know, several breaking stories this morning from Minneapolis to Venezuela and to Iran. We'll discuss them all with the top House Democrat, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. He's standing by live. That's coming up in the next hour.

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