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The Situation Room

FBI Raids Georgia Election Office; Trump Border Czar Takes Over Minnesota Immigration Crackdown; Trump Set to Hold Cabinet Meeting. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 29, 2026 - 11:00   ET

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

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PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Happening now, breaking news: In just moments, President Trump will hold his first Cabinet meeting of the year while juggling the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis, the threat of another government shutdown and several international hot- button issues.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Pamela Brown. Wolf Blitzer is off. And you're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BROWN: And we begin this hour with that breaking news.

Right now, President Trump, his top government officials and advisers are about to gather at the White House for the first Cabinet meeting of the year. It comes as the administration is dealing with nationwide backlash over the fatal shooting of two protesters by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is expected to be there as she faces growing bipartisan calls to resign. And, this morning, the administration is adjusting its tone on the crackdown in Minneapolis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HOMAN, WHITE HOUSE BORDER CZAR: I do not want to hear that everything that has been done here has been perfect. Nothing's ever perfect. Anything can be improved on. And what we have been working on is making this operation safer, more efficient, by the book.

The mission is going to improve because of the changes we're making internally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So we have a lot to cover to say the least.

CNN's Alayna Treene is at the White House and CNN chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny is here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Alayna, let's start with you.

What issues do you expect to come up during this Cabinet meeting?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: I do think Minnesota is definitely going to be one of the big ones.

I should note that's probably more likely to pop up in some of the questions that are asked following the Cabinet meeting, as you know. This is the president's 10th Cabinet meeting, and every single one thus far has really consisted of the president giving some remarks off the top.

He is probably going to touch on what is happening in Minnesota, just given this is such a focus, not only for this administration, but the entire nation at this moment. But then he's going to go around and ask each of his members to talk.

It's probably going to be a very lengthy meeting, as they typically are. But it's really the questions that are going to be -- what we're watching most closely, and many of them are expected to focus on Minnesota, specifically because Homan's rhetoric this morning at that press conference -- I should say it's his first time appearing in public, speaking in public since he was dispatched by the president to travel to Minnesota earlier this week.

It was a very striking tone shift from this administration. And that is exactly what he was sent there to do. The president essentially told Homan, go to Minnesota and clean up this mess that has been there for the last month or so now.

And what many officials, when I talked to them in the days around all of this, they said that Homan being there is really like him being the grown up in the room.

And that was what -- kind of the way that he presented himself during this press conference, trying to show that he was this pragmatic person, that they were going to be trying to turn the temperature down, that he is working with local officials in the state and on the ground, that they may at some point downgrade the amount of resources, federal resources, in the state, all of that really trying to set the stage to turn the page from what has been happening on the ground.

So, Minnesota is definitely going to be a huge focus, also because, I should note, Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, one of the people who has been a public face on all of this, particularly around those two fatal shootings, she is going to be at this Cabinet meeting.

And it's going to be her first public appearance since a very controversial press conference she gave on Saturday, one that was very different, much more defiant and aggressive than the one we heard from Homan this morning.

[11:05:00] But another -- some other big topics we're going to be looking at as well is specifically when you look at what's happening abroad is going to be on Iran. The president himself has kind of noted that, there, he's looking at a potential strike again in Iran since negotiations with them over a potential new nuclear deal have really stalled and fallen apart.

We have new reporting here at CNN that the president is contemplating another possible strike amid all of this. So there's going to be a lot of questions on that as well, Pamela.

BROWN: And if you zoom out, look big picture, we're seeing the president holding his Cabinet meeting this hour. He visited Iowa a couple of days ago.

Is there more of an effort to get him in front of the cameras right now?

TREENE: There absolutely is. And part of that is particularly on domestic issues. I mean, so much of what has dominated the president's agenda over the last year and even this month in January, I mean, you look at Venezuela, Iran, Greenland, all of the conversations really focusing on foreign policy issues.

His team wants him to talk more about domestic issues. And from my conversations with people in that building behind me, there's really been this impetus to get him out there on the ground to any domestic city, once a week, I'm told, to really begin looking at their strategy ahead of the midterm elections, which are obviously coming up in November.

But they want to get ahead of that messaging early on. So that's part of it, but also part of them wanting to make sure he's out there speaking to the press. He has a lot of public events this week. You mentioned Iowa, but he's going to be at a premiere for his wife, the first lady's film, tonight.

He's going to be doing a lot of different public events. That is all by design, Pamela. And so we are expecting to see more of the president, of course, today, but also the rest of this week and moving forward.

BROWN: All right, Alayna Treene, thanks so much.

Let's bring in Jeff Zeleny.

And just talk about the politics, Jeff, of what's happening in Minnesota and how that is forcing the Trump administration to adapt on its immigration crackdown there. I mean, we heard that change in tone from Tom Homan today.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It was a remarkable change in tone. I mean, we'll see if the policy changes as much as the shift in tone changes.

But, look, immigration was a strength for President Trump for really the last decade. Now it's a political weakness. There's no doubt about it. So sending Tom Homan there is one thing, but also just talking about reducing the number of agents there, a targeted enforcement, having a dialogue with local officials.

He said, you can't fix problems if you don't have conversations. That is remarkably different than Greg Bovino over the last couple of weeks. So -- but it was also clear that Tom Homan was still aware that the president was watching and that he's still working for the Trump administration.

He says he's not going to change the whole idea of going after sanctuary cities. He was very critical of that. And he was talking specifically about how the DHS was going to continue going after the worst of the worst.

We will see how long agents actually remain on the ground there, but from a rhetorical shift, it is certainly notable. And at the same time, the White House is now working with the leaders in the Senate on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, to try and avert that government shutdown. That's another change we've seen.

They realize the politics of this is not very good and they want this to move a quickly here and try and move beyond this. But, again, at the Cabinet meeting, we'll see if there's any light that is shined on Minnesota. I'm a little skeptical.

These Cabinet meetings are not that revealing generally.

BROWN: No, they're not.

All right, Jeff Zeleny, Alayna Treene, thank you both.

And as we've been discussing here, the Trump administration appears to be softening its tone on its immigration crackdown. There was some unrest overnight, though, in Minneapolis, where federal officials have shot those two protesters just this past month.

So there's a lot to discuss there on the ground. And then the president sent the border czar there to tamp down the tensions, and Tom Homan spoke earlier this morning.

I want to bring in CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, who covers immigration for us.

You have been covering immigration for so long, Priscilla,and Tom Homan himself. He is a veteran, right, in DHS. What stood out to you from his press conference?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, what we heard from Tom Homan this morning is really his classic approach to immigration enforcement. This is the philosophy that he has held for years.

And that is essentially doing targeted enforcement operations, but not foreclosing that, if there is another undocumented immigrant or immigrants in the vicinity, that they too can be swept up. So let's walk through what this means for Minneapolis. Well, first of

all, Tom Homan had said that he is not -- he is going to stay until the problem is gone. So, over the course of this news conference, he acknowledged multiple times that the status quo was not OK and he had been having conversations with local and federal officials over the last several days to try to create a path forward.

And that path forward, he said, is drawing down the number of federal agents who are in Minneapolis, but also hinging that on cooperation with local officials.

Of course, one of the points of tension between the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis, along with the federal government, is the cooperation with local jails, so giving notification to Immigration and Customs Enforcement if someone is being released from a jail that is undocumented and could pose a public safety threat.

[11:10:19]

He said that he was having multiple conversations about that so that there can be more working together and collaboration between the federal government and the local officials. And he said that this is going to be more efficient and -- quote -- "The mission is going to improve because of the changes we're making internally."

But on targeted enforcement, this is something we have heard multiple times from Tom Homan. And it is very traditional for Immigration and Customs Enforcement generally, which is to say that they identify who they are going to go after, that, in this case, they would have a criminal record, and they would pursue that target in these operations.

But there is also still the option of collateral. That is what they're called within ICE. That means any undocumented immigrant that is in the area of that operation that they could take in because of immigration violation.

So, it doesn't foreclose the idea that may happen. But to give this a big picture, it means that there is an adjustment that goes away from the broad immigration sweeps that we had been seeing that had been led by Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol official.

And, in many ways, this speaks to the difference in philosophies. This is a veteran ICE official who's coming in to do targeted ICE operations, the thing that ICE has done for years, compared to a Border Patrol official typically focused on border security doing sweeps in the interior of the United States.

So, tactically, this is expected to look different. We still don't know until we see it, but Tom Homan expressing some level of optimism that the two, the federal government and local officials, can work together to an end that tamps down on the chaos within the city.

BROWN: All right, Priscilla Alvarez, thanks so much for bringing us the very latest. And up next here in THE SITUATION ROOM: why a Chicago woman shot by a

CBP agent last year is now fighting to release new video from the incident after those two deadly shootings involving federal agents in Minneapolis.

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[11:16:53]

BROWN: Welcome back.

It is a very busy hour. First off, we're waiting for this press conference in Atlanta after the FBI executed a search warrant at an election office there in Fulton County, removing hundreds of boxes. So we're waiting for that.

Also, we're waiting for President Trump's first Cabinet meeting of the year. There are no shortage of issues domestically and international. So we're tracking that as well.

Also new this morning, lawyers for Marimar Martinez, a Chicago woman who was shot five times by a Customs and Border Protection Agent last year, asking a federal judge to allow the public release of body camera footage and other evidence from the incident.

I want to go live now to see in an anchor and correspondent Omar Jimenez.

Omar, tell us more about this.

Why is Martinez asking for this to be released now?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well if you remember, there was there was a lot made by the federal government calling her a domestic terrorist, calling her -- basically using a lot of terms that eventually did not bear out in court, because the federal government then requested that the criminal case against her be dropped.

And so now the attorney and Martinez herself are pushing for the release of the body camera video here, essentially saying that the government continues to use some of that terminology about her, domestic terrorist, things of that nature.

And since the criminal charges no longer apply, it should be an objective part of debate over what happened, especially since similar incidents are taking place in places across the country.

I mean, the attorney even cited specifically, based on recent events in Minneapolis Minnesota involving the execution of two U.S. citizens -- those were his words there -- who were engaged in similar peaceful protests as Ms. Martinez at the time of their killings.

He also said that the government narrative about what happened, that they -- that these agents were boxed in, again, with that framing of domestic terrorists, made its way up to the Supreme Court. And so basically he is saying that, with this video and other documents under protective order, as he's explained, with those out there, people can argue all they want about what actually happened.

But they will now actually have the objective facts, as he put it, to do so accurately. And another aspect of this is that Martinez, who was not in court today because she was not able to get off work, as we understand, says she feels a responsibility to continue fighting to get this material out by pressing forward not just with fighting back against her personal defamation, as she explains it, but not to be silenced by what is in the record of this case.

And so the attorney was not shy at all to look at what's happened in other cities and say that, if this video is not out, if these materials are not out, then people won't be able to accurately assess what we are seeing in some of the other cities where, again, we have we have seen people killed by federal immigration law enforcement.

BROWN: All right, Omar Jimenez, thanks for bringing us the latest on that. We will keep tracking that case as well.

And still ahead here in THE SITUATION ROOM: new evidence or an old grievance? What we know about the FBI search at an election office in Georgia and the legal ramifications. Fulton County officials are expected to speak any minute now.

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You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. We will be right back.

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BROWN: Well, happening now: In minutes, we expect to hear from officials in Fulton County, Georgia, where the FBI hauled off boxes of ballots from the 2020 election Wednesday. A source tells CNN the search is part of an effort by the Justice Department to look for alleged voter fraud in the county.

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And, this morning, President Donald Trump is sharing several false claims on social media about the results of the election. Again, there have been multiple audits, recounts in Georgia. Joe Biden won in 2020, won the state.

Joining us now is former CNN legal analyst and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Elie. He is also the author of "When You Come For the King."

Elie, great to see you.

Let's start with the search warrant itself. What is the significance here that prosecutors were able to get one?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Pam, there are two things that have to happen in order to get a search warrant.

First of all, prosecutors at DOJ have to write up an affidavit laying out probable cause that a crime was committed and that they'll find evidence of that crime in the location to be searched. I've written up a bunch of these documents. You do have to go into some level of detail.

And worth noting, Pam, given that this is a sensitive political location, typically, this type of affidavit would have to go up all the way to the top of the Justice Department to the deputy attorney general or maybe even the attorney general herself.

Then step two is the...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Hey, Elie, I got to jump in because Fulton County officials are actually talking about this. Let's listen in.

ROBB PITTS, CHAIRMAN, FULTON COUNTY, GEORGIA, BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS: In 2020, I told him and others, including then-Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, then-Congressman Matt Gaetz, and the president himself, to stay the hell out of Fulton County. I meant it then and I mean it today.

Every audit, every recount, every court ruling has confirmed what we, the people of Fulton County, already knew. Our elections were fair and accurate and every legal vote was counted. These ongoing efforts are about intimidation and distraction, not facts.

I will always stand with our voters, our election workers, and, most importantly, the truth. As you all know by now, yesterday, shortly afternoon until around 9:00 last night, the FBI made a surprise execution of a criminal search warrant at the Fulton County elections hub.

Now, today, I want to speak directly to Fulton County voters as your chairman. Some people have asked and are still asking, why did you turn over the records? Why didn't you fight? Number one, let me be again crystal clear. There is a fight.

Fulton County is now, has been, and always will be committed to upholding the law, no matter what anyone else does. Our attorneys carefully reviewed the search warrant and advised me and others that it was in the best interest of Fulton County to comply, which we did.

Secondly, one of the strangest things about this case, that these records were the subject of active litigation and, quite frankly, were likely to be unsealed and turned over in a matter of weeks. All they had to do was ask the judge to do so, but albeit in a much more orderly manner.

We in Fulton County have nothing, nothing, nothing to hide. And finally and most importantly, this is by no means over. This is by no means over. And we're grateful for everyone around the country who is in this fight with us. And they're with us from every corner of this great nation.

Any honest review, any honest review of these files will show what every previous review has shown. Fulton County elections are fair and lawful. And the outcome of the 2020 election will not change, period.

Let me talk about voter protections. Now, we do not know where our election records have been taken or what will happen to them now that they are out of our control. While they were here, they were safe and they're secure.

Once they left Fulton County, our election center, I don't know where they are. I don't know who has them. I don't know what they're doing with them.