During Thursday's Senate Homeland Security Committee, all three men overseeing the top federal agencies running immigration enforcement under Trump testified they did not give DHS Secretary Kristi Noem any information describing Alex Pretti as an domestic terrorist wanting to cause mass casualties of law enforcement after he was brutally murdered by ICE.
Democratic Sen. Gary Peters asked ICE Commissioner Rodney Scott, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Joseph Edlow, and Acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons point blank if any of them had given Kristi Noem the information she used to smear Alex Pretti after his death.
Remember, DHS Sec. Kristi Noem immediately came out after the murder of Pretti and attacked Pretti as being armed and dangerous so ICE agents feared for their lives and killed him. She claimed he appeared to want to inflict maximum damage of law enforcement, saying he committed an act of terrorism.
Sen. Peters wanted clarity on how the Trump administration came to so many erroneous conclusions about Pretti's death.,
PETERS: Commissioner Scott and Acting Lyons, did you did you provide Secretary Noem with an assessment of what Mr. Pretti was engaged in, and that he was engaged in domestic terrorism? Is that why she said that is because you told her, that was your belief at that time, even though you need an awful lot of investigation now to know exactly what happened.
Are you the ones that told her that?
SCOTT: No sir.
LYONS: No sir.
PETERS: Did anyone who reports to either of you provide this assessment to Secretary Noem that this was mass casualty or he was attempting to inflict mass casualties and domestic terrorism? Did someone in your staff tell her that?
SCOTT: Not to my knowledge, sir.
PETERS: S why would Secretary Noem, why would she tell the public that this was an act of domestic terrorism, when right in the heat of the moment, How would she possibly come to that kind of conclusion to tell the American public that when they're watching this video?
SCOTT: I can't speculate on what someone else would say or why, sir
PETERS: MR. Lyons
LYONS: Sir, I can't speculate speculate to what the secretary thought at that time, sir so.
PETERS: It seems to me a really big question which means that we have to have Secretary Noem here. She deserves it, the America or the American people deserve to have the Secretary the the person who is responsible to you are responsible to and all the men and women I used to answer to her. She needs to be before this Committee she ducks coming out in public and talking and hasn't accepted prior invitations to come to this Committee.
How could you come to those conclusions, those narratives, before any evidence was there even after all that's happened since then, you two are telling me you don't have enough evidence even though it looks so clear on the video.
Iit should have looked really clear to her if she looked at the video she had it that close a lot of this got posted pretty quickly how she came to those conclusions.
You didn't provide any information to her which makes me question it even more. If she got no information from you, in the line of -- in the chain of command, how would you come up with that kind of narrative that the chain of command wasn't doing it?
DHS Sec. Kristi Noem does not take her orders from Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the shadow president. If no one at ICE gave her those lies to spew to the media, who did?
If Noem used Miller's insane account of what transpired to Alex Pretti as fact without doing due diligence, then she should be fired immediately.
Baby Goebbels seems untouchable at this point.
If we lived in credible times, with credible leadership in the White House, both f these ingrates would be dismissed forthwith.
