Trump officials, MAGA under fire over baseless claims about Pretti killing

US President Donald Trump’s administration and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) allies are facing a backlash for making baseless claims about the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in the city of Minneapolis.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Sunday claimed that Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, had “approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun”, and that agents had “attempted to disarm the suspect, but the armed suspect violently resisted”.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told a news conference that Pretti had “attacked” border agents and was “brandishing” a gun.

Noem also claimed Pretti’s actions constituted “domestic terrorism”.

Video footage shot by bystanders shows Pretti filming a group of Border Patrol agents on Saturday before stepping in front of one agent to defend a woman whom the agent had shoved to the ground.

In footage shared by US-based Drop Site news, Pretti can be seen trying to help the woman before at least five agents tackle him to the ground and shoot him multiple times after a scuffle on an icy road.

Analysis of footage by US media and Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group, shows that an agent had already confiscated Pretti’s gun before he was shot dead.

The footage does not show Pretti holding a weapon at any point during the incident.

Minneapolis Police Department Chief Brian O’Hara later told reporters that Pretti was a “lawful gun owner” with a permit and that his only criminal history was a few traffic tickets.

Despite the video evidence, Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino told a news conference that Pretti’s gun showed that he “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement”.

Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security, claimed without evidence that Pretti was an “assassin” who tried to “murder federal agents”.

Popular right-wing influencers amplified the Trump administration’s claims on X.

The MAGA-allied account Libs of TikTok labelled Pretti a “lunatic” and an “assassin”.

Right-wing influencer Alexander Muse told his 681,000 followers that Pretti was “expecting a firefight at a distance” with federal agents, despite there being no evidence that he ever took out or brandished his gun.

Some right-wing influencers went even further than echoing the Trump administration’s narrative, piling blatant misinformation on top of officials’ unsubstantiated claims.

Trump ally Nick Sorter, who has 1.4 million followers on X, falsely claimed that Pretti, a US citizen, was an “illegal alien”, who was “armed with a gun and attempted to PULL IT on agents as he was being apprehended”.

Conservative podcaster Jesse Kelly smeared Pretti as a “soldier for the communist revolution”, who had “died fighting in a war”, in an X post that included a photo of Pretti on a hike.

MAGA-affiliated accounts also shared digitally-altered images purporting to be pictures of Pretti dressed in female clothing.

In a statement, Pretti’s parents accused the Trump administration of spreading “sickening lies” about their son.

“Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs,” his family said in the statement, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

“He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed.”

Democrats also accused officials of lying about the shooting.

“It should freak the American people out that Trump, Noem and Bovino lie so enthusiastically. He wasn’t ‘brandishing a weapon’,” said Chris Murphy, a senator from Connecticut.

“He wasn’t attending a ‘riot’ or ‘interfering in a crime scene’. He was an ICU nurse exercising his constitutional rights. We saw what we saw.”

Condemning the shooting and Trump’s immigration crackdown, former US President Bill Clinton said that “at every turn, the people in charge have lied to us.”

Claims that Pretti was a “domestic terrorist” and scrutiny of his political beliefs mirror similar accusations levelled at Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who was also shot dead by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis earlier this month.

Trump administration officials also described Good as a “terrorist” and claimed that she was trying to run over an immigration officer with her vehicle, despite video evidence casting doubt on those claims.

Officials have also spread misleading information seemingly aimed at discrediting protests against Trump’s anti-immigration crackdown more generally.

The White House last week shared an image of an arrested activist, Nekima Levy Armstrong, that had been altered with artificial intelligence to make her look emotionally distressed.

Some Republicans have pushed back on the Trump administration’s narrative around Pretti’s death, including Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who said on X that “carrying a firearm is not a death sentence, it’s a Constitutionally protected God-given right”.

The National Rifle Association, a pro-gun lobby group, also rejected a suggestion by a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor that approaching a law enforcement officer with a gun could be grounds for being shot.

Minnesota law enforcement officials have also contested statements by Trump administration officials, including a claim by Vice President JD Vance that local authorities refused to assist their federal counterparts in the investigation into Pretti’s killing.

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said on Sunday that it was state authorities who were being obstructed, stating on X that its officers had been denied access to the crime scene by the DHS.