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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Trump Attends Dignified Transfer Of Service Members As Iran War Escalates; The False Claims, Chaos And Coverups Behind The Trump Administration's Killing Of Two American Citizens; Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Is Interviewed About 18 Days In Minnesota: The Killings Of Renee Good And Alex Pretti; Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Is Interviewed About 6,600 Non-Citizens Added To NJ Voter Rolls Due To Software Error; U.S. Supreme Court To Hear Challenge To "Assault Weapons." Aired 5-6p ET
Aired July 22, 2026 - 17:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: -- intelligence of the American people.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Right. It's taxpayer dollars after all. All right, thank you all very much for being here. Really appreciate having you. Thanks to all of you at home for watching as well.
Don't forget, you can now stream The Arena live or catch up whenever you want to. It's all in the CNN app. You can scan, I guess it was the first QR code. This is The Arena podcast QR code. You can follow us also on X and Instagram. We're at The Arena CNN, but don't go anywhere. Jake Tapper is going to have much more of his great reporting on immigration coming up next.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper. We're going to start with breaking news.
President Trump just wrapped up remarks at a high school in Marietta, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. Traveling with the president today is the family of 1st Lt. Tyler Feehan. Feehan was one of four U.S. service members killed in Jordan by an Iranian strike on Friday. He's one of 18American service members killed since President Trump's war in Iran started on February 28th.
Now, hours before the Georgia event, the president was with the families of the service members killed Friday at the dignified transfer at Dover Air Base in Delaware as the military brought the remains of those Americans back home.
Also today, the president's aggressive new threat to Iran. This time vowing to blow up possible civilian sites anytime Iran shoots a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. The president writing, quote, whether it be by missile, rocket, drone or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy one bridge or power plant, including those located next to or in the capital city of Tehran. We're going to have much more on all of that ahead.
But very first, we're going to start with our CNN exclusive, chaos, lies and cover ups. It's the lead special investigation. It's called 18 Days in Minnesota. This is about the Trump administration's killing of two American citizens six months ago. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were going to examine what exactly was going on behind the scenes in those days surrounding their killings.
How the Trump administration's enforcement policies criticized as over aggressive, contributed to their deaths. How lying about violence committed by federal agents also became standard. How federal authorities broke from precedent and stopped cooperating with local authorities looking into those killed by agents. Questions over whether any investigations are happening at all into Good's and Pretti's deaths.
Six months later, still no charges. One former federal prosecutor describing to me on camera how so much got out of control even before Good's killing, days before Good's shooting, there was an eerily premonition. An agent with the Homeland Security Investigations Division warned in a meeting with other officials, quote, someone is going to get killed. Here's our investigation. 18 Days in Minnesota.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER (voice-over): Chaos last December in Minneapolis as Operation Metro Surge got underway.
TAPPER: Quote, somebody is going to get killed. That was the disturbing warning from an agent of the Department of Homeland Security's Investigations Division that sent a chill throughout local officials here in Minnesota, including prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office.
The agent was worried about what would happen when Gregory Bovino and his Border Patrol agents got to this city. And the warning was tragically prophetic as Renee Good was killed on January 7th and Alex Pretti on January 24th. This is the story and the investigation into what was going on behind the scenes between those 18 days.
DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars. They contribute nothing. I don't want them in our country. I'll be honest with you.
TAPPER (voice-over): Those December 2025 comments demonizing Somalis living here in the U.S. legally would set the stage for the launch of Operation Metro Surge. The Trump administration's deployment of 3,000 immigration agents to Minneapolis and St. Paul.
GREGORY BOVINO, COMMANDER-AT-LARGE OF U.S. BORDER PATROL: Those are the general orders.
TAPPER: Controversial Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino would lead that surge come January, a man already gaining a reputation for his use of aggressive tactics in places like Los Angeles and Chicago and being accused by a judge of lying under oath.
THOMAS CALHOUN-LOPEZ, CHIEF OF THE VIOLENT AND MAJOR CRIMES UNIT: Beginning in December, the administration had an unprecedented wave of immigration enforcements in the city, in the Twin Cities.
TAPPER: What problems did it cause?
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: The administrations are empowered to set priorities, and that is traditional and it's appropriate. But Operation Metro Surge was different from the beginning. It was conducted in a paramilitary posture.
TAPPER (voice-over): This is Tom Calhoun-Lopez, at the time the chief of the Violent and Major Crime section for the U.S. attorney's Office for the District of Minnesota.
CNN spoke with more than a dozen former and current members of the Trump administration for this story, most of whom refused to go on the record out of fear of retaliation by the Trump administration.
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: Hundreds of agents were flooding in from out of district.
[17:05:00]
They weren't familiar with Minnesota communities, they weren't familiar with Minnesota residents. And operationally, they were in a paramilitary posture as well. They were heavily armed, they were in masks. They patrolled in combat gear. And their ethos was of a military occupying force. Their mission seemed to be to subdue the state and to bring it to heel.
TAPPER: You know from occupation because you're a veteran.
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: That's correct. I deployed to Iraq twice, once as a field artillery officer and once as an Army Judge Advocate.
TAPPER: And it reminded you of that kind of occupation?
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: It did. Through two different deployments. I got to see what a military occupation looked like. And unfortunately, Operation Metro Surge had all the hallmarks of a military occupation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't control the unsafe or questionable tactics by other agencies that are here.
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: It had become a toxic environment, and it had become a lawless environment. And from that lawlessness came chaos. And from that chaos came the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti and other people being injured.
TAPPER (voice-over): On the morning of Wednesday, January 7th, a Minneapolis mother named Renee Good dropped her 6-year-old son off at school, then went with her wife Becca to be legal observers of the immigration enforcement operations in their city.
RENEE GOOD, FATALLY SHOT BY A FEDERAL IMMIGRATION OFFICER: That's fine, dude. I'm not mad at. Boy, show your face. I'm not mad at you.
UNIDENTFIEID FEMALE: That's OK. We don't change our plates every morning. Just so you know. It'll be the same plate when you. Come talk to us later. That's fine, U.S. citizen.
You want to come at us? You want to come at us? I said go get yourself some lunch, big Bo boy.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go ahead, get out of the car. Get out of the car.
TAPPER: What did you think when you first saw the video?
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: We were getting updates as they happened. We got the video as soon as we can. Obviously, the video is speaks for itself. It's troubling.
TAPPER (voice-over): Immediately following the shooting, senior prosecutors in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office did what was standard operating procedure. They ordered an investigation into the shooting, whether Renee Good's civil rights had been violated.
For a brief moment, it looked like a joint investigation would happen between the FBI and local authorities. But the Trump administration had different plans.
KRISTI NOEM, FORMER HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: This appears as an attempt to kill or to cause bodily harm to agents, an act of domestic terrorism.
TAPPER (voice-over): In addition to those highly questionable comments from then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, President Trump quickly took the Truth Social and made demonstrably false claims, saying Good was, quote, very disorderly, obstructing and resisting. Who then violently, willfully, maliciously ran over the ICE officer who seems to have shot her in self-defense, adding, it is hard to believe the ICE officer survived.
TAPPER: This is the site where Renee Good died. The investigation was shut down into the shooting.
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: That's correct. The President and the Secretary of Homeland Security both announced that there would be no investigation. Secretary Noem referred to Renee Good as a domestic terrorist, and I've certainly seen no evidence of that whatsoever.
TAPPER: And had you ever seen anything like that happen before where the President weighs in on a shooting?
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: Never. Under normal times, an administration would have no objection to an investigation because the investigation may clear the officer. An investigation isn't necessarily designed to indict anybody.
TAPPER (voice-over): U.S. attorney Daniel Rosen was in Washington, D.C. at a conference. So the second in command of the U.S. attorney's office, Joe Thompson, who was worried that the presence of Homeland Security agents on the street, ICE, Border Patrol, CBP would inflame matters, made a request to the Feds to remove them. That request was honored. Briefly.
MAYOR JACOB FREY (D), MINNEAPOLIS: They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defense. I want to tell everybody directly that is bullshit. To ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis.
TAPPER (voice-over): In the US Attorney's Office, staffers grimaced, knowing Mayor Frey's comments weren't going to help. But even before those comments, prosecutors worried about how the Trump administration would handle this shooting. By the end of the day, the FBI was no longer working with local authorities on the shooting investigation, and Homeland Security agents were back on the streets.
On Thursday, January 8, the day after the Renee Good's shooting, tensions between the prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota and the Justice Department began. Justice Department officials wanted the prosecutors to claw back a warrant they'd obtained for Renee Good's car, a warrant predicated on an investigation as to whether Renee Good's civil rights were being violated.
DOJ officials in D.C. wanted the charges to be against Good for attacking the ICE officer. The Justice Department, led by the office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, also wanted Good and to a different degree, her widow Becca investigated. But the Minnesota prosecutors would not carry out those actions.
On Monday, January 12, five days after the death of Renee Good, Minnesota's U.S. attorney Daniel Rosen returned to the office and he told prosecutors that the marching orders from D.C. were to investigate Good for an assault on a federal officer. And he also suggested they take some investigative steps regarding Good's widow Becca. Instructions, the prosecutors thought were madness.
TAPPER: Does it make sense to investigate somebody for assault on a federal officer if they're dead?
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CALHOUN-LOPEZ: It did not make sense to me at the time. It didn't make sense to any of us. It doesn't make sense to me today.
TAPPER (voice-over): Also that day, Greg Bovino demanded a phone call with the U.S. attorney's office. Bovino was angry that prosecutors had not been filing cases against protesters whom he had claimed and his agents had claimed were assaulting officers and agents.
BOVINO: You assault an officer and you're going to jail.
TAPPER: What Bovino said on the call stunned the prosecutors. Quote, these people are wackos. Bovino said about Minnesota protesters. They this shit is getting ready to come. We're not going to calm it down, we're going to put it down. We're going to pacify this place. We're going to roll 'em up. Bovino also made a comment about Rosen, the U.S. attorney who's an orthodox Jew, sneeringly referring to him as one of the chosen people, a comment prosecutors found antisemitic.
After the call with Bovino, one of the prosecutors said, quote, they're going to kill someone else. Others agreed. On Bovino's claims that immigration officers were being assaulted and charges weren't coming, well, those cases had been going to Tom Calhoun-Lopez.
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: Law enforcement officers have a difficult job, and federal agents do their job very, very well. So it's important that prosecutors protect them where they can, and that means vindicating their rights if they're victims of assault. But I began to have concerns that agents were not being truthful, making arrests with very little provocation, and then soon enough, no provocation.
And even after that, I would learn that agents had instigated physical contact, and so they were arresting people not only who had committed no assault, but who had in fact been assaulted by federal agents. The result of the false claims and the chaos in Minneapolis would soon reverberate inside the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office.
TODD BLANCHE, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: We investigate when it's appropriate to investigate. And that is not the case here.
TAPPER: Tuesday, January 13, six days after the killing of Renee Good was a pivotal day here at the U.S. attorney's office in Minneapolis, pushed so hard and so far by the Trump Justice Department to do things that they found unconscionable, even immoral. Five prosecutors, including four top prosecutors, resigned in protest.
PAMELA BONDI, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Six prosecutors who suddenly decided they didn't want to support the men and women in ICE. So they came, they said, we want to resign. So the breaking news tonight, I fired them all.
TAPPER: Attorney General Bondi, go on Fox and claims that she fired you. What was your response when you heard her say that?
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: I know what happened. And if it made the Attorney General feel better to say that she had fired us. That was okay with me. I never intended to leave the U.S. attorney's office. It was my dream job. It's why I went to law school. It was the greatest professional privilege of my life. But I could no longer stay.
TAPPER (voice-over): The next evening, January 14th, another shooting.
NOEM: What we saw was three individuals weaponized shovels and brooms and attack an ICE officer that had to defend himself.
TAPPER (voice-over): DoorDash driver Alfredo Alejandro Alhorna fled in his car when he realized he was being followed by ICE agents returning home, where he lived with his cousin. Footage of the incident shows Alhorna being tackled by ICE agent Christian Castro before a brief struggle. When Elhorna and his cousin, Julio Cesar Sosa- Celis, both in the country illegally, run towards their home, you can see the agent appear to fire his weapon toward the entryway. He hit Sosa- Celis, who was not the target of the pursuit. He hit him in the leg. As with the shooting of Renee Goode, the video told a different story
from what authorities initially claimed. The ICE agent was later charged with four counts of second degree assault and one count of falsely reporting a crime.
Saturday, January 24th was 17 days since the death of Renee Good, the culmination of weeks of chaos and cover ups in Minneapolis.
TAPPER: Six months ago this Friday, a VA intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti was right here on Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis. He'd been protesting the Immigration Enforcement events, but he was out here as an observer filming immigration agents pushed a woman to the ground. He said, are you OK? And helped her up, at which point immigration agents swarmed him. He had a weapon he had a permit for. It was holstered. It was taken from him before any shots were fired. And then at least 10 shots were fired into the body of Alex Pretti right here on the ground at no point had he been resisting arrest.
NOEM: When they tried to get him to disengage, he became aggressive and resisted them throughout that process. These officers used their training, followed their protocols, and were in fear of their lives and the people around them.
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: I was not with the U.S. attorney's office when this happened, but the video is shocking. And I would think as an American citizen, that there would be a full investigation and there would be some accountability.
TAPPER: Are you surprised there hasn't been any sort of result?
CALHOUN-LOPEZ: I wish I could say I'm surprised. I'm certainly dismayed.
TAPPER: The shooting of Alex Pretti was widely seen by prosecutors and former prosecutors as bad as prosecutable. It was, one former prosecutor told me an execution. A summary execution. It's that simple. Unquote.
[17:15:00]
And yet local officials were kept from the scene of the shooting by federal officials. And six months later, still no charges have been brought against the officers who killed Alex Pretti right here.
STEVE SCHLEICHER, ATTORNEY FOR PRETTI FAMILY: My big fear is it will be 12 months from the day of the shooting and we'll be right in the same place.
TAPPER (voice-over): That's Steve Schleicher, attorney for Alex Pretti's parents.
SCHLEICHER: This is a family who lost their only son and watch this unfold on TV, would never contacted by the government to even inform them that this had happened. They haven't been treated with respect or dignity. TAPPER: How worried are you that we're now in a world where there is no accountability for police officers or any sort of law enforcement or immigration enforcement agent?
SCHLEICHER: I don't think the citizens of this country are going to accept that. We certainly don't accept it. Alex's parents don't accept it. We demand accountability and transparency for, for Alex's killers.
SUSAN PRETTI, MOTHER OF ALEX PRETTI: He loved his country, but he hated what people were doing to it.
TAPPER (voice-over): While the Trump administration and our nation have largely moved on from these tumultuous 18 days in Minnesota, the Pretti family and the Good family still live every day with their losses. Meanwhile, the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies continue to be criticized for being overly aggressive to the point of unnecessary state sanctioned killing. They're criticized for agent slime and for administration cover ups.
As of now, the status of any federal investigation into what happened in Minneapolis with Renee Good and Alex Pretti remains unclear.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TAPPER: CNN reached out to former Border Patrol official Greg Bovino. He disputes the characterization of that January 12th phone call. He says that though he could not recall his exact words, the idea that he would say he would put down protests was not something he would say. As for the chosen people comment, he denied that it was intended to be antisemitic. He says he was simply frustrated he had not been able to reach U.S. attorney Rosen on the Sabbath.
As we look back on those chaotic 18 days in Minnesota, it's worth noting that so many of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policies, which contributed to the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti six months ago, still have not changed since those tragic deaths.
Let's talk about this now with CNN's Priscilla Alvarez here in studio and CNN's Evan Perez up in New York. They also contributed reporting to what we just presented to you.
And Priscilla, you're the one that spoke with Greg Bovino that joy got to land on your lap. What does Bovino say about that time now in retrospect?
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDNET: Well, Bovino has repeatedly said that he believes the administration surrendered in Minnesota because remember, Tom Homan, the White House border czar, came in after those two fatal shootings and Gregory Bovino went back to his sector on the border and ultimately retired. And so he still looks back at this time and feels that they could have kept going.
In fact, Jake, fear and aggression is the point when it comes to Bovino because it's not just about arresting undocumented immigrants in the United States, but also encouraging them to leave on their own. And he believes that aggression inspires them to self deport.
Now, when it comes to Minneapolis, remember that the pressure campaign had been building at that point, that there was the administration wanted more and more immigration arrests. And we had already seen the aggressive nature of some of these arrests in other cities like Chicago and Charlotte and New Orleans by Border Patrol, but also by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
And it was an ICE agent that had killed Renee Good in early January. But Bovino told me that he landed shortly after that and then went on the scene. And then that two day operation that he anticipated in Minneapolis ended up being extended.
Now, he does remember being intense, particularly in that call that you referenced with those prosecutors where he wanted them to do more to quell those protesters. But Bovino, of course, and his posture on all of this is what the administration decided to, in some respects, do away with when they brought Tom Homan onto the scene. And Bovino ended up retiring from the Border Patrol. So he is no longer with the administration or with his agency.
But even after those changes, Jake, we of course saw two fatal shootings in the span of a week by ICE. So certainly that aggression is still very much there when it comes to immigration enforcement.
TAPPER: Evan, given the way the investigations into the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were handled, the idea that there's no cooperation with local officials, is that the new model for the Trump administration anytime there's a shooting by a federal agent or a federal immigration agent.
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Look, they have not announced any kind of formal policy change, Jake, but that is certainly what you are seeing play out, certainly with the Minnesota shootings. There was, as you reported there in that piece, you know, an initial, at least initially. They were trying to cooperate because they've had a long good relationship with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota. They've investigated a number of incidents there jointly.
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And so the idea that they broke with that was certainly a break from precedence. And so what we're seeing play out, though, in some of the more the latest ones is they're at least trying to see whether or not there is something to investigate before they make those statements. I'll read you as part of what DOJ sent to us in response to our questions in this story.
They said in the aftermath of the Renee Good shooting, state elected officials publicly prejudged the ICE officer as guilty before any investigation had concluded. As the investigation progressed, the department began providing information to state law enforcement and continues to do so.
Obviously, Jake, they are saying that they are now cooperating. Some of that is a result of the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department telling the FBI, for instance, to turn over Renee Good's car to the state so that they can do their own investigation.
Now, we the jury is still out, Jake, as to whether we will ever see something come from the investigation of the shooting death of Alex Pretti. Again, everyone is waiting to see what the Justice Department will do when the facts, you know, present themselves like this with these officers clearly doing, going way beyond what was normal for their conduct.
TAPPER: Evan Perez and Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
Joining us now is Minnesota's Senator Tina Smith, a Democrat. Senator, what is your reaction to our story, particularly to what the prosecutors in Minnesota, their concerns about everything going on, their concerns about what the Trump administration was telling them to do, and all of this resulting in the deaths of Renee Goode and Alex Prady back in January and still no results from any investigation.
SEN. TINA SMITH (D-MN): Well, Jake, I am -- I'm moved and outraged all over again by watching this -- by watching this reporting, which I think does a great service because it draws the through line between the paramilitary force on the streets of Minneapolis, the violence that was done, the violence that it caused, and the complete lack of any accountability.
And your coverage of what happened in the U.S. attorney's office is particularly important because I know those prosecutors, those are by the book, hard-nosed prosecutors that are there with no fear or favor. And the way in which the kind of the cold hand of politics came into the U.S. attorney's office and was so egregiously used that so many of those top prosecutors felt that their only course of action was to resign just shows how corrupt the whole response was by the Trump administration.
TAPPER: As so many people I spoke with for this story pointed out. There have been no charges brought in either investigation, nothing clearing the officers, nothing indicting the officers. Do you think there will ever be any accountability, even if it clears ICE Agent Jonathan Ross in the Renee shooting, is there ever going to be any investigation in any result that we see?
SMITH: Well, you know, and you always say, like, if you have nothing to fear, then go forth and bring all the evidence out and let's have an unbiased and fair and balanced investigation. And I remember when I first got word of the killing of Renee Good, and one of the first things that happened was that there was an announcement, as we always expect in Minnesota, that there will be a joint investigation by state and federal authorities to understand what happened and then to see immediately Kristi Noem come out and say that the woman was -- that Renee was a domestic terrorist was just shattering in our faith for whether justice could actually be done.
In the end, will justice be done? I mean, I have to have hope in that. I have faith in our state prosecutors. But as long as we have Todd Blanche and Donald Trump leading the Justice Department, it is hard to imagine how they would ever truly allow an investigation that is going to hold them accountable for this law breaking, how that would ever happen as long as they are in power.
TAPPER: So the final straw for the five prosecutors that resigned on January 13th from the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota and the others, I think eight others in the subsequent weeks, the final straw for the five was the fact that the Justice Department and specifically the office of Deputy Attorney Todd Blanche, Attorney General Todd Blanche, were telling them a claw back the warrant for Renee Good's car and do a new warrant that isn't looking into whether Renee Good's civil rights were violated, but is looking into whether or not she assaulted a federal officer and whether or not she's a domestic terrorist and some investigatory steps involving the widow of Renee Goad.
Yes. And they just -- they wouldn't do it. And these are people living their dream jobs. They want to be prosecutors. They want to work for the U.S. attorney's office. They want to protect the citizens of Minnesota.
Do you sense that this position of always defending agents and officers whenever there's a shooting to the point that they are making victims of shootings into suspects?
[17:25:11]
Is this the new policy of the Trump administration? And how might this play into the Judiciary Committee and the vote on Todd Blanche, whether he should be permanent attorney general?
SMITH: Well, it should very much play into it. And I would just note that my colleague, Senator Klobuchar, Senator from Minnesota, who was on the Judiciary Committee, questioned Todd Blanche about this very issue. To think that the Justice Department would so flagrantly try to take the person who is clearly in my mind the victim of a crime and turn them into, you know, the subject of an investigation is just mind boggling.
And you know, Jake, you can appreciate because I know you know Minnesota well, as this was all happening in the moment in Minnesota, just the outrage that people were feeling and also the feeling that what was actually happening is that the Trump administration was trying to provoke Minnesota to respond to their violence with violence of our own, which, thank God, never truly happened.
But what might have happened if they had been successful in provoking violence is something that is always -- I will always be so scared about what that might have been.
TAPPER: Yes, some of those prosecutors came to think that Bovino was actually there to incite a riot. That was their concern.
SMITH: Yes.
TAPPER: And that's why one of them said after that phone call January 12th, someone else is going to get killed. Minnesota Democratic Senator Tina Smith, thank you so much for joining us.
Already there is immediate fallout from this special investigation here on The Lead, how Democrats warned this could potentially threaten the nomination of Todd Blanche in terms of his promotion to get the permanent job of attorney general. And later, the major screw up that led to more than 6,000 non-U.S. citizens on New Jersey's voter rolls. Does this error prove in any way Trump's point that there needs to be more election security? We're going to talk to a New Jersey Democrat.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[17:31:01]
TAPPER: Breaking news on our Politics Lead and the fallout on Capitol Hill from The Lead special investigation that hopefully you just saw 18 days in Minnesota where we attempted to shine a light on what was going on behind the scenes in those horrific days surroundings the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January 2026 in Minnesota.
Our investigation came up during a forum earlier today by Senate Democrats talking about Trump administration Attorney General nominee, Todd Blanche. A former federal prosecutor said Blanche's decisions are eroding public confidence in the government specifically did mention the efforts to halt or interfere with the Minnesota U.S. Attorney's Office investigation and the Minnesota local investigation into the shooting deaths of those American citizens, Good and Pretti.
Democratic Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey who chaired that forum and is on the Senate Judiciary Committee joins us now. Senator, tell us more about the forum and about your reaction to the reporting. So many of the orders that were roiling the prosecutors in Minnesota who ultimately resigned were coming directly from the office of then Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, first of all, the forum was interesting to me because you had career professionals from Peter Carr who has a career was appointed by George W. Bush worked for Orrin Hatch as well as Perry Carbone who is a career prosecutor who knows Blanche.
All of them said that what happened in Minnesota was completely out of line with what is standard practice to be opening up a civil rights investigation. They said there should be no impeachment of these individuals. There simply should have been a standard procedure for an investigation in line with what the state operations are doing. But this is so wildly out of the norm of what the DOJ does in a case like this that it really indicates that this was political decisions being made and trying to find ways to subvert not only an honest investigation but really subvert the truth and shade it in a way that really supported what the Trump administration's case was that they were trying to make which is clearly to me violative of what is really public safety and justice.
TAPPER: I guess the question is whether or not the fact that a lot of this was because of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche or at least from people in his office, I guess the question is do you think Republicans will find that troubling? Obviously Democrats do. We just had Tina Smith on and you're here. But do you think that Thom Tillis, John Cornyn that this will bother them potentially?
BOOKER: Well, first of all, Jake, at risk of insulting you, there's no question this was coming from Blanche's office.
TAPPER: Right.
BOOKER: These were directives from Blanche clearly and he was again, yet, another example of him subverting the standard practices for his political aims. So that's clear. Now, your second question is really the question of the month is will my Republican colleagues continue to look the other way even when you have people like Thom Tillis saying if I see even a whiff of the politicization of that office, well there's no whiff.
You are straight up in the pig style -- side breathing in the filth of the way this man has been operating the Department of Justice. He's up for a position that we already have a body of evidence of how he would act in that position because he's been the acting director conducting these political prosecutions trying to shield the President, trying to give him unjust deals that that exonerate him from any tax criminal liability that he might have. This is clearly an agent of the President's interests and not the rule of law.
TAPPER: While I have you here your home state of New Jersey is making a lot of headlines right now because the Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill revealed that during the previous administration of Governor Phil Murphy, some 6,600 non-citizens were added to the voter rolls mistakenly and about 400 of them voted in recent elections. Governor Sherrill says she's taking steps to make sure this doesn't happen again. How did this happen?
[17:35:16]
BOOKER: Well, first of all it's unacceptable. Voting integrity is the bedrock of our democracy. And here is really a governor stepping up and doing the right thing taking responsibility. The buck stops with her, she's taking action. And the first thing she did was open and transparent and accountable to the people putting it out there and now she's running her own investigation.
This is how it should work. We have a voting system in which millions, in fact, hundreds of millions of votes are being cast every single year and we should have public officials that are willing to stand up get to the truth, correct any irregularities or in this case 400 people who should not have vote voting. What I'm really concerned with right now is just seeing the way that the Trump administration is trying to weaponize this to advance their horrific bill that would pull authority from the states to run their election and put it under him our nation's biggest ever election denier.
That is insanity. The Constitution clearly says that elections reside with the states. And in New Jersey we have a governor standing up and correcting the problem.
TAPPER: New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker, thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.
BOOKER: Thanks for having me, Jake.
TAPPER: Much more on that big story in New Jersey, that error in the voter rolls, does the revelation help build Donald Trump's case for that SAVE Act?
And the online attack by progressive Democrats in Congress that seem to go after the wrong Jewish guy named Josh. Stay with us.
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[17:41:15]
TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, President Trump seizing on what Democratic Governor Mikie Sherrill calls a, "software glitch." A glitch that allowed nearly 400 non-U.S. citizens to vote in elections in New Jersey. He posted, "A crooked election system. SAVE America. New Jersey governor forced to admit hundreds of foreigners voted in elections after Dems claimed no problem."
Here now is New Jersey Congressman Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat. And Congressman, President Trump says Congress needs to pass a law requiring people to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin posted, "Just one illegal vote cancels out the vote of a U.S. citizen." What do you say to those who argue that what happened in New Jersey under Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, proves the President's point?
REP. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-NJ): Well, first of all, there was clearly an issue here and our new governor, Governor Sherrill, is on top of it, right? I mean, immediately took action, went back and said, where was the problem? Is going to take those people off the rolls and is dealing with it, but obviously the key is to make sure we don't have these kind of technology glitches.
And I think, Jake, the one thing that no one's talking about is the company, IDEMIA, which is behind the software that screwed this up, where the glitch was on, is actually all over the federal government and doing work in places like Department of Homeland Security on CBP for facial recognition. The TSA pre-check, you know, when you go to the airport, you get those TSA pre's, they do, they run the software for that.
So the question is, is our national security safe with them at the helm actually designing all this software? And that's one of the questions I wrote to the GAO about today and to Office of Management and Budget and said, are we doing an audit of where this company is all over our government and making sure that they're not other glitches we should be worried about?
TAPPER: That's a great question, but the -- you oppose the SAVE Act and Trump would say, were he here?
GOTTHEIMER: Yes.
TAPPER: This is why you need voter ID?
GOTTHEIMER: Well, no. There's one thing to have, and a lot of states do have voter I.D. when you show up to have some sort of voting. The problem with Trump wants to do is the registration side, making it nearly impossible for lots of people to be able to register who are citizens, to be able to register to vote. The multiple I.D.s you need, you need passports, you need birth certificates. It's -- we're doing everything possible to make it difficult for people who are citizens to vote. That's the beef that a lot of us have.
It's the way this whole thing is designed, is intended to actually take people off the rolls who have a right to vote, make it difficult for them to vote, and we should be doing more to promote voter access and participation for citizens who, of course, have a right to vote in our country, and it's one of those sacred rights.
TAPPER: We booked you to talk about this New Jersey voting thing that we reported on yesterday, but since then, this bizarre thing happened on Twitter or X that I want to ask you about. You posted something on social media about DSA, Democratic Socialists of America members being socialists trying to hijack the Democratic Party. Congresswoman Summer Lee, who I think is a member of DSA, in any case she's certainly a progressive, she posted, "What about Democrats who sign bombs and vote to drop them?" I guess she thought she was talking about you doing that, and you wrote back, you know that's the other Jewish guy named Josh, right? You're referring to Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro who -- when Zelenskyy -- well, let me just keep -- let me just continue to tell the story.
Anyway, so she was actually talking about Josh Shapiro who signed artillery. Then --
GOTTHEIMER: He signed the artillery, by the way, in Pennsylvania that was being, with Zelenskyy, that's being used to, of course, beat back the Russians who are killing Ukrainians.
[17:45:01]
TAPPER: Right. Yes. That is accurate. But apparently unbeknownst to her, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who's also in the progressive caucus, she chimed in and she posted, "He signed the bombs," meaning Shapiro, "signed the bombs that you voted to be dropped. Hope this helps." I guess she thought that Shapiro had signed bombs in Gaza? I don't know.
GOTTHEIMER: I assume so, I assume it was some anti -- I assume it was some sort of anti-Israel thing which would be typical for her rant.
TAPPER: Then you noted on social media that she also voted for the same bill which armed Ukraine, not Israel, and you posted the voting thing. What is going on? Why all this -- I mean, first of all, what's your take on the fact that apparently Congresswoman Summer Lee was confusing you with her own governor? I think she's from Pittsburgh, right?
GOTTHEIMER: She is. TAPPER: And you were, and two Jewish guys named Josh, but two very -- I mean, I can't make any sense of it. What do you think? What do you think it says?
GOTTHEIMER: It's too rich, right? I mean, what do I think? I think that she confused us and I don't understand how she did it. And what's crazy is, to your point, why reflexively she and Representative Omar were so opposed to it, because they, why? Because they presumed it had something to do with the U.S.-Israel relationship, so they're reflectively against it, and so they decided to attack, ironically attacking support for Ukraine, which is something that I believe they think is a good thing, and obviously making sure that Ukraine has the weapons to defend themselves and, of course, to fight back against Putin and his dictatorial march against you in Ukraine.
So I don't -- I'll just tell you this, the DSA, which I know they're affiliated with, the socialist movement overall, which I don't believe is part of the Democratic Party, it's -- the socialists are trying to hijack the Democratic Party, but part of this, part of their core values is just, let's be against anything on Israel, you know, and it's obviously gotten worse and spread to just being against, in a lot of cases, anything to do with Jews in America. So it's very concerning, it's obviously, I -- you know, I spoke out about it, you know, I was, you know, Representative Omar said, I hope it helps, and I hope my clarifying for her that she voted for it helps her.
TAPPER: I guess it's a good thing they didn't rope in North Carolina Governor Josh Stein or Hawaii Governor Josh Green. Thanks --
GOTTHEIMER: The four Josh, you know, governors, exactly.
TAPPER: A lot of anti-Joshism going on. Thanks so much for joining us.
GOTTHEIMER: A lot of anti-Joshism. I'll see you, man.
TAPPER: OK.
Ahead, a ripple of court rulings about guns in America, specifically what are called assault weapons. My next guest covers the gun industry. He believes bans on assault weapons will not exist by this time next year.
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[17:52:24]
TAPPER: In our Law and Justice Lead, for the very first time, an appeals court has struck down a New Jersey state ban on semi-automatic weapons classified as assault weapons, as well as high-capacity magazines. The ruling comes as AR-15s are back on sale in the Commonwealth of Virginia, after an injunction blocked a state ban there.
In the next term, the U.S. Supreme Court is going to hear challenges to similar bans in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois. My next guest is confident that by this time next year, bans on assault weapons will be gone because the U.S. Supreme Court will say that they're unconstitutional. With me now is Stephen Gutowski, a firearms reporter for The Reload, who our viewers know very well. So, thank you so much for being here.
The U.S. Supreme Court expanded gun rights in two rulings last term. Why are you so confident AR-15 bans will be gone by this time next year?
STEPHEN GUTOWSKI, GUN-SAFETY INSTRUCTOR: Yes, I mean, normally I wouldn't come out and make this kind of --
TAPPER: No, it's unlike you.
GUTOWSKI: Yes, but I will say we already know for sure where four of these justices stand on this exact kind of law, where we have four that have said they don't think it's constitutional under the Second Amendment. So, really the only question is whether they can get a fifth on their side and, as you just mentioned there, a lot of the rulings that we've seen from the Supreme Court on Second Amendment issues, the conservatives have all gone in the same direction.
TAPPER: Right.
GUTOWSKI: The majority of the majorities have all been in the same place on all of these rulings. So, you also have an expert consensus from people across the ideological spectrum who study the Second Amendment closely. We did a piece of The Reload where we asked half a dozen of them and they all came essentially the same conclusion as well, that the Supreme Court is likely to strike down these laws.
TAPPER: Why would it be unconstitutional? I mean, gun -- I mean -- I -- most people think that states and cities have a right to enact some restrictions and I guess the idea when this was passed into law in '94 on the federal level was that, you know, these guns are very lethal and can theoretically kill a lot of people at a lot of time, even though they're semi-automatic, not automatic. Why do you think that they will find it unconstitutional?
GUTOWSKI: You know, it really goes back to their first landmark decision on the Second Amendment back in 2009, the Heller decision, where they found that D.C.'s ban on handguns was unconstitutional because they use the standard that handguns are in common use for lawful purposes and therefore can't be restricted in the way that D.C. was doing that. And if you take that same logic and apply it to these AR cases, you're very likely to come to the same outcome because of how popular these restricted weapons are.
[17:55:06]
TAPPER: Not to mention most of the killings are by, in this country, are by handguns, not by ARs, right?
GUTOWSKI: Sure. Yes, I mean, certainly ARs have been used in some high-profile mass shootings, but even if you're just corning off to mass shootings, you know, CNN uses the gun violence archive for its tracker and most of those shootings involve handguns and then, yes, just generally, as far as murder statistics go, handguns are also more common there and they've, as we just mentioned, the court has already said that handguns can't be restricted for that reason, just for the general fact that they're used in crimes, so it's unlikely the Supreme Court is going to come down and say you can restrict AR-15s for a similar reason.
TAPPER: Interesting stuff. Thank you so much, Stephen Gutowski. Good to see you.
The big story tonight, a special investigation here on The Lead, looking into those 18 days surrounding the January killings of Rene Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal immigration officials in Minneapolis. Coming up, I'm going to talk to two people close to Alex Pretti, who was killed six months ago this Friday, and get their reaction to what they see as a complete lack of justice or accountability. Stay with us.
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