Jan.30

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Minneapolis Is Apparently the Hill that The White House Wants to Die On, Part IX

We still have a fair bit of analysis we want to do when it comes to the fiasco in Minnesota. However, it takes a fair bit of time, and a fair number of words, to address things the way we want to. Sometimes, the latest news from that front, plus analysis, plus the other news we really need to mention adds up to too much.

So it is today. We intended to run down the several Minnesota-related news items that broke yesterday, and also to have an analysis portion. But this post, with several items unfinished, and without the rundown of news, is already 6,423 words. So, the analysis will have to wait for next week. And this series is easily going to run to at least 13 or 14 parts at this point. Who knew?

Anyhow, here's the Jackboot News:

• Backing Off?, Part I: Border czar Tom Homan has been dispatched to Minneapolis to clean up the mess that Gregory Bovino created. He announced that the plan was to begin a drawdown of ICE agents in the city (though he didn't really give a timeline). Minnesotans were skeptical, and apparently they were right to be, because when Donald Trump was asked if a drawdown was being planned, he said, "No, no. Not at all."
  
  
• Backing Off?, Part II: Meanwhile, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) announced that "Secretary Noem has informed me that ICE has ended its enhanced activities in the State of Maine." That, of course, is not the same thing as "ICE has ended ALL its activities in the State of Maine."
  
  We do not know what the difference between "enhanced activities" and "activities" is, and how one knows when the line between the former and the latter has been crossed. It is possible that Collins is just trying to put a positive spin on things because she fears for her political life. It is possible that this (and Homan's promise) are something real. It occurs to us that, if and when the administration DOES back off, it will likely try to keep that on the down-low as much as is possible, so as to save face, and so as to avoid angering the base.
  
  
• Investigations: Even if the administration pulls some/most/all of its shock troops out of Minnesota, it's still going to find ways to harass and villainize Minnesotans. For example, FBI Director Kash Patel announced yesterday that his agency is going to investigate claims that activists used encrypted Signal chats to exchange information about the locations and movements of ICE officers. The encryption, and the information exchanged, in Patel's telling, means that the participants in the chats broke the law because their participation came with "the sole intention of tracking down federal agents and impeding/assaulting/and obstructing them." Patel, who made his announcement on a right-wing podcast, agreed with the host that this was no different than pursuing a terrorist network.
  
  Perhaps Patel was not paying attention in his law classes at Pace University. Tracking federal agents is entirely legal, and exchanging information about their whereabouts is covered by the First Amendment. The stuff about encryption is a red herring; a communication does not go from "legal" to "illegal" because it's encrypted. Actually obstructing an officer is illegal, but you cannot obstruct an officer on Signal, or any other media platform. You have to do it in person.
  
  The administration also has plans to investigate Rep. Ilhan Omar (DFL-MN). In this pursuit, Trump, et al., have many things going for them: unlimited money, a great deal of legal talent, a high degree of motivation, and a clear-cut perpetrator. All they need now, to use the old mystery writer's line, is a crime. Take note of how flimsy the claims against the Signal chatters are, and then consider that the White House couldn't even do that well with Omar. If we add in the fact that she's been under a powerful microscope for years, it suggests her odds of actually ending up in a federal courtroom are slim.
  
  
• New Video: There is a new video of Alex Pretti, the victim of the second shooting. It was taken 11 days before he was killed, and (apparently) shows him arguing with ICE officers, spitting in their direction, and kicking (and destroying) the tail light of a federal vehicle, before being tackled by an ICE officer. The reason we write "apparently" is that his face is not all that clear, but both facial-recognition technology and his parents say it was him. You can view the video here, if you wish.
  
  This does not change anything, in our view. The original, now infamous, videos of the shooting showed that Pretti was an active and somewhat aggressive participant in events, as he tried to shield two women from being assaulted by ICE officers. In addition, he was also carrying a gun. He clearly was not some unlucky fellow who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We already knew that.
  
  However, he did not assault officers on the day he was shot, and he did not resist arrest. His past is utterly irrelevant to what happened on the day he died. Even if you swapped him out for Kyle Rittenhouse or Luigi Mangione, there was no basis for shooting him, especially since the agents presumably didn't know about the events from 11 days earlier (and if they did, it's even worse for them, because then it looks like a revenge killing). Anyone who says the new video changes everything, or that it changes anything, is selling something, we would say.
  
  We are hardly the only ones to reach this conclusion. Here, for example, is MS NOW's Willie Geist:

  In the desperate search by some partisan hacks to find a justification for the shooting death in the streets of Alex Pretti some of them think they've found something in the video that you just played and described. That was 11 days before Alex was shot. It was also in Minneapolis. It does look like him, based on his clothes and his appearance, the BBC says they've all but verified 97% that it's him. All those things are true, and maybe not the way you or I would have behaved at a rally or a protest or whatever it is.
  
  But my God, are you suggesting because he heckled officers and then kicked in their taillights that 11 days later he deserved to be effectively executed in the streets of the city? Is that the case you're making? That's insane. Right?
  
  How, in good faith, how can you make that case? And it also shows 11 days earlier those agents, when confronted by Alex Pretti, they subdued him, they got him on the ground and then they released him. They did not fire 8 to 9 shots into his body.

  We think these are all fair points.
  
  
• Resignation: This is actually a few days old, but it accidentally slipped through the cracks. The FBI agent who was first assigned to investigate the killing of Renee Good, and who was yanked off the case after the Bureau decided NOT to cooperate with Minnesota officials, has resigned.
  
  Did he resign in protest over the obvious politicization of the investigation? Was he somehow forced out because he knew things that the administration would prefer not be known? He is not saying, at least not thus far. And it's certainly possible that his resignation has nothing at all to do with Good and the investigation of her death. But if so, that is quite a coincidence, indeed.

And that's the latest. Hopefully, Part X will be more than just a rundown of breaking news. However, given that there are 4 days between now and then, who knows? (Z)