Jim Geraghty of National Review Online critiques a high-profile member of the Trump administration.
If the Trump administration wants the public to support its immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis and elsewhere, it needs to speak honestly about events like the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly demonstrated that she is incapable of doing that, and is proving a consistent liability to a top priority of the administration. …
… What is indisputable is that Alex Pretti never removed his firearm from his holster. Pretti’s holster appeared to be on his belt, near his back.
During the scrum, while Pretti is on the ground, a DHS agent in a gray coat and gray cap searches his waistband, finds the firearm, and removes it. It is difficult to see how Pretti, unarmed and on the ground with agents on top of him, could have presented an immediate and deadly threat to the lives of the DHS agents around him, and in some cases, on top of him.
The DHS agent or agents who killed him fired ten shots at an unarmed man on the ground. …
… Noem and the rest of federal law enforcement have offered no proof that Pretti “arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement,” nor that he intended to “massacre law enforcement.”
The video does not show Pretti “attacking” the officers. It does not show him “brandishing” his weapon.
In the criminal justice system, words have particular meanings. Under federal law, “The term ‘brandish’ means, with respect to a firearm, to display all or part of the firearm, or otherwise make the presence of the firearm known to another person, in order to intimidate that person, regardless of whether the firearm is directly visible to that person.”
You will recall that in the aftermath of the fatal shooting of Renee Good, Noem also labeled Good a “domestic terrorist.”
Again, these words have meaning under the law.
