A decision by Donald Trump’s administration to ice out Minnesota authorities from having access to evidence in the shooting of 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti in late January by Department of Homeland Security agents was thoroughly trashed on MS NOW Tuesday.
On Monday, Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) issued a statement saying the FBI made a formal notification that it would not share any of the accumulated information or evidence related to Pretti’s shooting.
That led Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) to respond, “Trump’s left hand cannot investigate his right hand. The families of the deceased deserve better.”
On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” there was unanimous agreement among the panelists that there is a cover-up that stretches from the FBI to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to the White House itself.
As co-host Mika Brzezinski put it, “In one case, Stephen Miller called Alex [Pretti] a ‘would-be assassin.’ This seems even more brazenly corrupt with the appearance of zero interest in accountability. Zero. Absolutely none.”
“These renegade agency heads who have been lying through their teeth from the very beginning, have these agents who behaved like thugs, behaved improperly. And that, of course, we heard that actually at a Senate hearing earlier this week from people in the department themselves that they acted in an extraordinarily unprofessional way,” co-host Joe Scarborough contributed.
Co-host Willie Geist suggested, “They're saying inside [state officials] that this is hampering their own investigation, because the FBI is holding so much of the evidence that they can't actually get. They think they know what happened, they've seen the videos, but they don't have all the evidence. They need to bring it to trial. So this is clearly the federal government saying we have something to hide here. Therefore, we're not going to share all of our evidence with the state.”
According to Scarborough, Minnesota officials need to take the next step, assemble what evidence they have, and approach a Minnesota judge to put the federal government on the spot.
“I think the state of Minnesota, if they believe there are charges, they need the information that they have, and they have a lot of information, they have a lot of eyewitnesses, they have a lot of video,” he advised. “I think they need to go ahead and bring the charges and then go to a judge and have the judge, through the discovery process, make the feds give up the evidence that they have because they do not have a legitimate cause that will stand up in court for covering up these two killings.“
"In fact, that's really the only justification they're going to have to go in front of a Minnesota judge and say, ‘Your honor, we at this time cannot turn the evidence of these two killings over to the state because we, the federal government, are actively involved in a cover-up of their killings’,’” he predicted.