Top White House aide Stephen Miller acknowledges possible breach of protocol before Alex Pretti’s shooting
By Kristen Holmes, CNN
(CNN) — Top White House aide Stephen Miller said Tuesday that officials were evaluating why Customs and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis “may not have been following” proper protocol before the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti — a remarkable acknowledgment of possible wrongdoing from one of the Trump administration’s most influential and hardline operators on immigration enforcement.
In a statement to CNN, Miller said the White House had “provided clear guidance to DHS that the extra personnel that had been sent to Minnesota for force protection should be used for conducting fugitive operations to create a physical barrier between the arrest teams and the disruptors.”
“We are evaluating why the CBP team may not have been following that protocol,” he said.
The statement marked perhaps one of the most notable shifts in messaging to date on Pretti’s shooting, from one of the administration’s most hawkish messengers. In the aftermath of the shooting, Miller labeled the Veterans Affairs ICU nurse a “would-be assassin,” while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed he “committed an act of domestic terrorism.”
Video, though, soon showed that Pretti was swarmed by law enforcement and disarmed before he was fatally shot. And President Donald Trump directly contradicted Miller’s characterization on Tuesday and said he hadn’t heard the domestic terrorist rhetoric.
Miller told CNN in the statement: “The initial statement from DHS was based on reports from CBP on the ground.”
On the day of the shooting, Noem was in near constant touch with White House officials, including Miller, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
Trump had been privately defending an officer the department said pulled the trigger (DHS has since indicated two officers fired). And Noem was given guidance from multiple White House officials on how she should talk about the shooting during her press conference later that evening, including suggesting — falsely, it would turn out — Pretti had been “brandishing” a weapon, the sources said. Miller’s involvement in the discussions was first reported by Axios.
Noem briefed the White House officials on the defiant tone she planned to take, making clear she would defend agents on the ground. At the time, sources said, she and the White House were in lockstep.
Now, though, the messaging is coming under scrutiny, as Trump seeks to distance himself from those in his own administration. On Tuesday, the president struck a more conciliatory tone over the shooting in Minnesota as he appeared to break with both Noem and Miller.
CNN previously reported that some administration officials were left deeply frustrated over how controversial border official Gregory Bovino and Noem handled the fallout from the fatal shooting over the weekend. According to one official, Trump spent several hours on Sunday and Monday watching news coverage and was personally unhappy by how his administration was coming across.
But multiple sources said that neither Miller’s nor Noem’s jobs were at risk, despite the fallout. Of Miller in particular, one White House official told CNN that Trump “is hesitant to talk about getting rid of someone who has been here a few weeks, let alone someone who has been with him for more than 10 years. It’s not even on his radar.” Trump said publicly Tuesday that Noem would not step down, adding that she was “doing a very good job.”
Trump said in a Fox News interview Tuesday that he now plans to “de-escalate” the situation in Minnesota amid growing Republican discomfort over the shooting and its aftermath. He noted he had sent in border czar Tom Homan to replace Bovino as the leader of operations on the ground.
“I don’t think it’s a pullback — it’s a little bit of a change,” Trump told Fox News during a live interview in Iowa. “Everybody in this room that has a business, you know, you make little changes. You know Bovino is very good, but he’s a pretty out-there kind of a guy, and in some cases, that’s good, maybe it wasn’t good here.”
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