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Vance Takes Questions Over U.S. Operation in Venezuela; White House Briefing Amid Questions Over Administration's Account of Ice Shooting; Minnesota Officials Say Feds Blocking Them From Investigating Shooting; Senate Forces Vote on Trump's War Powers in Venezuela; Trump Administration Planning to Use Offshore Bank Accounts to Sell Venezuela's Oil. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 08, 2026 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:00:00]

J.D. VANCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: -- long time. I'm very proud of that. I think it suggests that the team works very well together.

Looking ahead, what is my role? Look, my role is going to be whatever the president asks me to do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has he asked you to do something yet?

VANCE: Well, every single -- or I should say every other day, I'm chairing the meeting that we do on this among White House principals to talk about next steps to try to ensure that Venezuela is stable. And as the president has directed us to do, to ensure that the new Venezuelan government actually listens to the United States and does what the United States needs it to do under our country's best interests.

So I'm going to be as involved as the president wants me to be. So far, that's been very involved, and I'll keep on doing that so long as the president asks me to do it.

(CROSSTALK)

VANCE: We'll go purple and then we'll go pink, or whatever that is in front of you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Royal purple, and then beige. All right.

VANCE: OK. Are there any indications -- you talked about the network, are there any indications that the lady who was shot, I know there are different reports from there, her wife said they were new to the area -- are there any indications she may have been a paid agitator, or maybe that there are others that were brought to the area, considering everything that's going on in Minneapolis?

VANCE: I wouldn't say that she was paid. I don't have the evidence to say that one way or the other. What I do know is that she was violating the law. And if you just look at the eyewitness accounts, they were saying she was there to prevent the enforcement of the law. She was trying to obstruct a legitimate law enforcement operation. That much is obviously clear.

The rest of it, of course, is part of the reason why we investigate this stuff. Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. vice president, even beyond the War Powers Resolution today, Congress has bucked President Trump on issues like tariffs. Are you concerned that President Trump is losing his grip on Republicans in the Congress? And what are you going to do about it?

VANCE: No, I'm not concerned at all. First of all, you know, we talked to some of the Senators who were going to vote the wrong way, in my view, on this resolution today. Much of their argument was based more on a legal technicality than any disagreement of policy. If you look at the people who actually voted, every single one of them have supported the administration's plan.

Second of all, as the president, I believe, himself has already said, every president, Democrat or Republican, believes the War Powers Act is fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law. It's not going to change anything about how we conduct foreign policy over the next couple of weeks, the next couple of months. And that will continue to be how we approach things. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. vice president, so we are seeing, regarding Iran, we are seeing the protests in Iran these days. The citizens are begging for help from the U.S. and Israel, naming streets in the city after President Trump. It seems there is an opportunity here that may not come again. Will the United States stand by the citizens of Iran? And if Israel decides to strike again, the nuclear sites in Iran, is the U.S. expected to take part?

VANCE: Well, look, we certainly stand by anybody who is engaged in peaceful protests, anybody who is trying to exert their rights for free association and to have their voices heard. Obviously, the Iranian regime has a lot of problems. And as the president of the United States has said, the smartest thing for them to have done, it was true two months ago, it's true today, is for them to actually have a real negotiation with the United States about what we need to see when it comes to their nuclear program.

I'll let the president speak to what we're going to do in the future. But we certainly stand with anybody across the world, including the Iranian people, who are advocating for their rights. I'll take just a couple more questions. Yeah, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you very much, Mr. vice president. Concerning Venezuela, how would you assure the Caribbean region that they will remain a zone of peace? Because some member states in the region are concerned.

VANCE: Well, look, the president had a very productive phone call with the president of Colombia yesterday and we continue to talk at all levels of government with a number of our friends in the Caribbean region. I actually think this is really good for peace in the Caribbean, because when you take away a major source of illegal cartel revenue, which is the cocaine trade, the fentanyl trade, other sources of illicit revenue, you actually remove the power of one of the main destabilizing forces in Latin America and in the Caribbean.

I really do think, look, we say it all the time, this is the president of peace. One of the ways that you establish peace in your own hemisphere is to make it clear that the United States is going to be respected, that the United States is willing to take power away from criminal cartel organizations and give it to legitimate governments. That's how we see the future of the Western Hemisphere, and we think it's going to be much more peaceful than it was certainly under Joe Biden. I'll take one more question. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. vice president, thank you. On Greenland, do you have a message for European leaders? Many in Europe reject the idea that the island could be forsaken (ph).

VANCE: Well, first of all, Secretary Rubio, I believe, is meeting with the leaders of Denmark and Greenland next week, I want to say it is, but maybe it's the week after that. We'll continue to deliver some of these messages in private, some of them in public, but I guess my advice to European leaders and anybody else would be to take the president of the United States seriously. What has he said about Greenland? Set to the side the crazy overreactions that I've seen from the press and from certain people in Europe, what has the president said?

Number one, Greenland is really important, not just to America's missile defense, but to the world's missile defense. Number two, we know that there are hostile adversaries that have shown a lot of interest in that particular territory, that particular slice of the world. So what we're asking our European friends to do is to take the security of that land mass more seriously, because if they're not, the United States is going to have to do something about it.

[14:05:00]

What that is, I'll leave that to the president as we continue to engage in diplomacy with our European friends and everybody on this particular topic. And again, thank you all for listening. Thanks for taking questions. And I just ask you, look, this is politics, and often Republicans get in arguments with the press about things, and I understand that. I think it's really irresponsible for you guys to go out there and imply or tell the American people that a guy who defended himself from being rammed by an automobile is guilty of murder. Be a little bit more careful.

We're going to talk about toning down the temperature, which I know the president wants to do, and I certainly want to do. One of the ways we tone down the temperature is to have a media that tells the truth. I encourage you all to do that. God bless you.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": All right, we are listening there to Vice President, J.D. Vance, who vehemently blamed Renee Good for her own death, stressed robust actions that are going to take place for federal fraud investigations in Minnesota, but not much about an investigation into what happened when it came to Good's killing even as, and he was lambasting the press for media coverage of all of this, there are a number of people inside of DHS who are aghast at what they saw in that video, and we need to be clear about that.

We are reporting what we have heard from sources. We are reporting what law enforcement -- former law enforcement sources familiar with use of force protocols are saying and questions that they are raising about how this was carried out.

I want to go ahead and bring in Priscilla Alvarez to talk a little bit about some of what we heard there, and we also heard something that I hadn't heard before, where he was defending this ICE agent and saying that this is someone who several months ago was actually dragged by another vehicle and had 36 stitches on his leg because of it.

Now, this is a separate incident from what happened in Minneapolis, we should be clear, and obviously I know he would (ph), Renee Good, be responsible for something that he suffered before, but he said, would you think that he was a little sensitive? So talk to us a little bit about what we heard from the vice president.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, let me walk you through what we do know about this ICE agent. According to a senior Homeland Security official I spoke with, this is an agent who had 10 years of experience with ICE, specifically the branch charged with arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants, and under that branch, the special response team.

Last June, during an operation, he was dragged by a vehicle over the course of the operation by an undocumented immigrant who the administration says has a criminal record, some 50 yards. He was hospitalized and made a recovery, but as you mentioned there, he had those 33 stitches.

According to ICE policy, the use of force is justified if the officer reasonably believes that their lives are in immediate danger, a vehicle, for example, could be a weapon, and that is what the Department of Homeland Security is saying here, that the vehicle was the weapon. Now, of course, all of the questions we have about the conduct of the officer, not only us in the press, but also internally in the Department of Homeland Security, would be answered over the course of an investigation.

These reviews are not new. They do happen in the department, and they take a long time because there are so many elements that they have to review, not only about what happened on the ground, but even this agent's own history in the agency. Now, the vice president was asked if he had any additional information informing his view of the incident, and he suggested that he didn't.

And that's been a question as well. Do they have more information that we are just not privy to that has led to this conclusion before an investigation has ended? And we didn't really get a clear answer as to whether that is the case. But again, the FBI is investigating this. The Department of Homeland Security, according to their own standard protocols, is investigating this. We know that the ICE agent was hospitalized as was standard protocol after this and has since been discharged. But certainly, there are questions about this, not only among the public, as we're seeing in Minneapolis and Minnesota writ large, but also internally in the department because of the conduct here and the way that this targeted operation just went awry.

KEILAR: You've spoken with a number of people. This isn't your opinion. This is you talking to a number of sources at DHS, experts who know a thing or two about use of force. What have they been telling you about what they have seen from the various angles, which is important. There are various video angles of this, and that's important to look at the different angles.

[14:10:00]

What have they been telling you about what they have seen and the questions that it raises for them about how this went down?

ALVAREZ: So first and foremost, what I often hear in the wake of an incident from my sources is we have to consider the totality of circumstances and we don't have that. We only have what the Homeland Security Secretary said that this woman was impeding and harassing the operation. So, they are looking at the same videos that we are looking at in the absence of more information.

It comes down to two bullet points. Did the officer feel as though his life was in danger as the administration has said with those, what they call, defensive shots? Because flight alone of a vehicle would not constitute deadly force. So, was there something that was happening that led him to believe that was the case?

The second was the way in which the ICE officer is shooting or approaching the vehicle. When they are trained, they are trained to form what they call a tactical L. So avoid being in front of the vehicle -- to avoid being in front of the vehicle and to avoid injury. And from the videos that my sources have looked at, it doesn't appear that he followed that training. Again, they're only viewing the few videos that we have seen.

And all of my sources always stress that this is the reason for the need of an investigation when the totality of circumstances aren't entirely clear. For now, the Department of Homeland Security is defending him. And I have also asked, Brianna, if he has been put on administrative leave. The vice president was asked that as well, I have not yet received an answer.

Just as a baseline, it is typical for an officer to be on administrative leave briefly in the days after an incident, including a shooting.

KEILAR: I want to go now to John Sandweg, the former ICE Acting Director. John, what did you think of what you heard?

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ICE ACTING DIRECTOR: You know, Brianna, it's very disappointing to see the vice president of the United States rush out to these conclusions when there's an investigation underway. It makes it incredibly hard for me to understand how anyone is going to see the results of that investigation as credible when the vice president, the president, the secretary have formally concluded that the shooting was justified and ascribed motivations to the deceased in this case.

You know, Brianna, really quickly, I think every person who I worked with at ICE I spoke to about this, many of whom support the president's initiative, some of whom support the president's initiative, some have concerns, but all of them agree that there are serious questions here and the proper protocol is to conduct the investigation as is required by internal DHS rules, as this happens in every other shooting case, and for the secretary and the department leadership to refrain from making any judgment until that investigation is complete.

And again, it's not just -- it's not just important -- it's important for the credibility of the agency, which is so critical for the agency's ability to operate. But again, at this point, I mean, I was just very surprised to see him speak so conclusively. And I'll just say one other thing, to say that we need to wait.

I mean, Tom Homan, I saw an interview with Tom Homan where he said, we cannot -- I cannot make a judgment at this point because the investigation is not complete. And Tom was hundred percent right about that. But to say that if you say you have questions or we need to wait for the investigation, that somehow you support open borders or that you are, you know, inciting violence against ICE agents, I just find that to be very disappointing.

This was a tragic accident. It deserves our respect. It deserves a thorough investigation. It doesn't deserve to become a political topic or a rush to judgment.

KEILAR: And Josh Campbell, to you, you've been going through the various videos over the course of the last days we've gotten them. Talk about what you see versus what Vance is saying.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, the videos don't paint as clear a picture as we've heard from the president, from the Department of Homeland Security secretary, from the vice president. And I agree with everything that John just said. And I would take that a step further.

I'm not in the prediction game, but I think you can bet that there is no chance that this agent actually gets prosecuted because what that would take is for the attorney general and the FBI to counter the president, the vice president, homeland security secretary. In this politically charged era, I just don't see that happening. What do we see on the video? Let's take a look at ourselves. And one thing the vice president noted is he said that the driver here deliberately tried to run over this ICE agent.

I think it's a lot more nuanced on that. Look at the front-left quarter panel of that little SUV there. And you see at one point the front tires will turn. So, it's clear she's trying to get away from the agents, which if this was a lawful detention, that would have been unlawful to try to flee. But to think that she was trying to mow this agent down when it was clear that she was trying to cut away from them doesn't really tell that same story. Yet, we see these definitive conclusions come out from the leaders.

I think that one thing that we'll have to wait and see, and maybe we won't get this information, but a lot of times, all the time, in fact, it will come down to the vantage point of the agent. I was a federal agent. I'll tell you that it's drilled into you, that you can only use deadly force when there's an imminent threat to yourself or someone else.

[14:15:00]

Can that agent articulate that? It looks like the vehicle did strike him at some point. Was that enough for him to fear for his life when he could have may be move out of the way? Those are all the questions we have.

KEILAR: Yeah.

CAMPBELL: But one thing we know is he went to guns, and now someone is deceased. So we'll have to see where this investigation goes.

KEILAR: Yeah. And he was very sensitive, as the vice president said. Certainly, there are going to be questions about that. Kristen Holmes, to you at the White House, what stood out to you in this?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, exactly what our previous guests are talking about, particularly John and the fairness of the investigation. Just to note, that was my question to Vice President Vance, was if the federal government says that the entirety of their weight is behind this ICE agent, if they say that they support the ICE agent, that this is domestic terrorism, then what is this ongoing federal investigation actually looking at?

They've already seemed to have made their determination. Where they even investigating that ICE officer? And he brushed it off with this idea that DHS is doing an investigation and then changed the subject to the fraud in Minnesota. And the reason why it is so critical for this investigation is for what we're seeing now in the Associated Press.

They did an interview with Good's ex- husband, who described her as not an activist, that she had never participated in any protest of any kind. He said that she was described as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing.

And her ex-husband also noted that the reason that she was driving at the time is that they had just dropped off -- she had just dropped off her six-year-old at school. To be clear, we don't know the circumstances around why she was on that street. That is what an investigation is for.

Now you are hearing somebody who knew her, who knew her whereabouts, talking about who she was as a person, her involvement with protesting. Of course, we know that just moments ago, Vice President Vance linked her to radical left protesters that were fighting ICE and law enforcement agents. This would all be part of that larger investigation.

However, again, it seemed after we saw Vance today, and we've already seen Kristi Noem, we've seen members of the administration, that the federal government has made up their mind and determined that this was -- that they are standing behind the ICE officer, that this was self- defense.

KEILAR: All right, Kristen, thank you so much and thank you so much to all of our folks there following this White House briefing. We're joined now by Democratic Senator, Ruben Gallego of Arizona.

Senator, I'm not sure if you were able to see the entirety of the vice president's remarks there, but he said this is a tragedy, but a tragedy of Renee Good's making. And he stood by this ICE officer and he talked about this robust effort by the Justice Department to root out fraud in Minneapolis. What are your impressions?

SEN. RUBEN GALLEGO, (D-AZ): Well, number one, it's entirely irresponsible to come to a conclusion of what caused this. There's a lot of things that could have caused this, and some of it could be as simple as the fact that we have lowered the training standards for these ICE agents. The reason we have high training standards is because when you're interacting with humans, you have situations like this.

For us that used to serve in the military or have served in the military and have been trained to do this type of work, you have to be very aware and be very conscious of what's happened around cars. You can see that there's a very cavalier attitude the whole time, whether it's this incident or other incidents that these ICE agents are taking, and this is a whole other problem that this administration is just not engaging in.

They're using these forces, these ICE agents, not to just enforce deportation, but also to strike fear in communities. I see it everywhere I've traveled to. I've seen it talking to people in Arizona, talking to people in Chicago. The reason they're finding themselves in this situation is because these ICE officers aren't effectively doing their work as professionals. They're more just trying to spread the propaganda of this presidency, and that's why we're here at this situation right now.

KEILAR: So he said, and important to note, yes, you are a combat veteran. You know a thing or two about use of force. Obviously, military is different from DHS and each agency has its own protocols. The vice president, who is also a veteran, he noted that this is a sort of veteran ICE officer. I think he said it was -- I think we know this is someone with several years, maybe a decade of experience, and he said that this was someone who, months ago, was dragged by another car for 50 yards and had 36 stitches in his leg. Do you think that he was a little sensitive? What is your reaction to him sort of saying that as he kind of seemed to be saying, cut this guy some slack? GALLEGO: Well, I remember in my time and the days that I would get shot at every day, or bombed, or IED, or RPG, did not give me an excuse next year not to continue being professional, or the next day I should say, to not give me an excuse the next day to make sure that I treated civilians I was interacting with in a professional manner.

[14:20:00]

And I didn't put myself in danger or other people in danger. This is why there has to be a full investigation on what happened here. And yes, I'm sure what the vice president is saying about what happened to this officer before is true. It does not excuse whatever actions he may have taken upon this time. Every action has to be different.

You can't bring that type of stress into this environment because you're dealing with U.S. citizens that have a right to protest, and they don't have a right to be bullied by the federal government. And I think the fact that they're not going to participate in an investigation with the government of Minnesota tells you a lot what they're aiming to do.

KEILAR: How could you get an investigation, or how could there be an investigation that you would put credence in, considering they are no longer -- you have Kristi Noem saying there is no jurisdiction, Minnesota has no jurisdiction here. Minnesota saying actually initially, we were involved here but we've been cut out of the deal. How could there be an investigation that you could trust?

GALLEGO: Look, there are a lot of other agents as well as former U.S. attorneys, former Homeland Security officials that have worked for Democrats and Republicans that are professional that could actually conduct this on their own. There are organizations such as police associations that could be providing a real investigation that we could all understand and actually feel confident in.

But the fact is that they're already making -- the White House is already stating the claim of innocence. It's going to be very difficult for anybody within the FBI to actually conduct this type of investigation. More importantly again, if they really were willing to try to just conduct law enforcement, deportations through normal process, you would not find yourself in this situation.

The fact is that they're saturating these neighborhoods, not because they're trying to essentially look for people that are deported, they're trying to intimidate the local population, trying to intimidate U.S. citizens. And that's how they ended up in this situation where U.S. citizens ended up having a confrontation with our law enforcement. It's unnecessary. It's entirely unnecessary because it's all being driven by politics and not by the law enforcement needs of the time.

KEILAR: I do wonder, and you formerly are a member of the House of Representatives, and we are just a couple days past the fifth anniversary of January 6th, and there was obviously a lot of people commemorating Ashli Babbitt, who was killed on that day by a federal law enforcement officer. And it's something that I think stands out to a lot of people, because you have this very different treatment of these two individuals, one who was 36 when she died, one who was 37 when she died, and yet you have such a, I think, Democrats look at what Ashli Babbitt was doing, and they disagree with how she was conducting herself.

Republicans look at how Renee Good in Minneapolis was conducting herself. They disagree with that. And there are these very two different judgments on ultimately their deaths and whether they were merited. How are you seeing that?

GALLEGO: I see it very simply. Ashli Babbitt is a traitor, was a traitor the whole time. She had been warned many times to stand back, do not cross. She was just in front and helped break through a glass and was climbing through when there was another police officer on the forefront telling her to stop. This is not at all the same. The difference is that the Trump administration will lie to protect their interests, and what happened on January 6th was motivated and propelled by that administration, by Donald Trump, and Ashli Babbitt was a traitor to that cause.

This woman that just died in Minnesota, we don't know what was the cause. We don't know exactly what happened there. They're not entirely at all the same. And the fact that Republicans try to equate it just tells you just how much they're really just kowtowing and bowing to Donald Trump because by any regards, there's no way that this is all the same.

If you just look at it, what happened there and what happened now, there is no equivalence.

KEILAR: Senator Ruben Gallego, thank you so much. Really appreciate you being with us.

GALLEGO: Thank you.

KEILAR: We have much more on the shooting in Minneapolis ahead. Plus, lawmakers are one step closer to blocking President Trump's military action in Venezuela on the heels of the Maduro raid. The latest on that vote and the president's response coming up on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:28:58]

KEILAR: Significant questions emerging today about U.S. plans in Venezuela. In an interview with The New York Times, President Trump was noncommittal about how long the U.S. presence would last. Asked directly if it would be three months, six months, a year longer, the president commented, I would say much longer. Today, the Senate voted to move forward with a plan to rein in Trump's war powers in Venezuela, with five Republicans siding with Democrats to force a vote next week.

Some lawmakers are also raising concerns after the administration announced it would utilize a collection of international oil traders and offshore bank accounts to sell Venezuela's oil and manage the resulting cash flow instead of using Treasury Department mechanisms.

We are joined now from Capitol Hill by Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin. He's a former Senior Chief in the Navy SEALs, the first enlisted SEAL ever elected to Congress.

All right, Congressman, are you comfortable with this idea of U.S. oversight of Venezuela lasting years?

REP. DERRICK VAN ORDEN, (R-WI): What I'm comfortable with is making sure that we follow through with the commitment to allow the Venezuelan people to have self-determinations. I do not support --