TV News LIES

Over $500,000 has been raised through an online fundraiser for the loved ones of Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old ICU nurse shot and killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.

The funds, which totaled over $530,000 early in the afternoon on Jan. 25, are intended to support the "immediate and ongoing needs" of family Pretti leaves behind, according to the fundraiser's description. Organizer Keith Edwards said Pretti's father has been added as the beneficiary, so their family now has direct access to the money raised.

"Thank you to everyone who has been so generous either donating or sharing the fundraiser — you are what America can look like at our best," Edwards wrote. USA TODAY has reached out to GoFundMe and Edwards to determine whether the fundraiser has been verified.

Pretti, a U.S. citizen and registered nurse who treated veterans, was shot and killed by a federal agent after confronting immigration authorities in the Midwestern city. Federal officials alleged Pretti was carrying a gun he intended to use to "kill law enforcement." Videos from bystanders − and a witness account in court filings − do not show Pretti brandishing a weapon when he approached agents.

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Members of the National Park Service removed signage around the President’s House historic site on Independence Mall on Thursday afternoon, in what appeared to be the fulfillment of an executive order from the White House meant to remove displays in America’s national parks that “disparage” the nation.

The signage was part of the exhibition “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation,” which was unveiled in December 2010. It provided information about the nine enslaved people who then-president George Washington brought with him to the Philadelphia presidential residence and Washington’s ties to slavery.

Starting after 3 p.m., placards were ripped from the wall around the site with crowbars as people walked by, some heading to the Liberty Bell Center. Signs were unbolted from the poles overlooking the dig site where America’s first “White House” had stood until 1832. They were stacked together alongside a wall, and then taken away around 4:30 p.m. in a park service truck. No indication was provided where the signs and exhibition parts will go.

“It’s a damn shame,” said one onlooker who didn’t wish to be identified as he walked by. “All because of one man.”

Billy Penn reached out to both the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior by email Thursday, but neither had responded by the time this article was published.

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Video recorded by witnesses to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday shows that the 37-year-old registered nurse was holding a phone, not a gun, when he was tackled and shot, directly contradicting the claims of senior Trump administration officials that he threatened to “massacre” officers.

In the aftermath of the killing, which was recorded by multiple witnesses, the Department of Homeland Security released an image of a handgun, which Donald Trump referred to as “the gunman’s gun” in a social media post. Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, said at a briefing that Pretti had “approached US border patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun”, though she later declined to say whether or not Pretti pulled the gun out.

Greg Bovino, a senior border patrol commander who was reprimanded by a federal judge last year for lying, also told reporters that Pretti had approached border patrol agents with the same gun.

“The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a border patrol agent fired defensive shots,” Bovino said. “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

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An FBI agent in Minneapolis who attempted to probe the death of a 37-year-old woman killed by a federal immigration officer earlier this month has resigned.

A source familiar with the situation told NewsNation, The Hill’s sister channel, that agent Tracee Mergen resigned as a supervisor in the FBI’s Minneapolis field office following pressure from bureau leadership in Washington.

Mergen left her job after facing pressure to discontinue an inquiry into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, Jonathan Ross, according to The New York Times, which first reported on Mergen’s resignation.

“It is FBI policy not to comment on personnel matters,” the FBI said in a statement to The Hill.

Mergen’s exit comes after the Justice Department (DOJ) said it sees “no basis” for a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Good.

Good was fatally shot while in her SUV on Jan. 7 during an immigration operation in a Minneapolis neighborhood. A private autopsy revealed Good had gunshot wounds to her left forearm, right breast and head, and that a fourth bullet grazed her body.

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Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Allen, who were arrested and charged for their role in an anti-ICE demonstration that disrupted Sunday church services in St Paul, Minnesota, have been released.

Video of the two women posted online showed them emerging from detention on Friday, raising their fists and embracing their loved ones. “Thank you all for being here,” Levy Armstrong said. “Glory to God!”

A federal judge ordered their release earlier in the day, ruling that the government had failed “to meet its burden to demonstrate that a detention hearing is warranted, or that detention is otherwise appropriate”.

A judge has also ordered the released of a third activist involved in the church protest, William Kelly, saying he was not a danger to the public, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

On Thursday, the White House was caught posting a digitally altered image of Armstrong’s arrest on social media, which had been manipulated to falsely portray her as crying, and to darken her skin.

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The decision by Donald Trump’s justice department to conduct no investigation into the deadly use of force by Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident who was moving her car out of the way of federal agents when he opened fire, reportedly distressed federal prosecutors and a leader of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, according to reporting from MSNOW and the New York Times.

A report for MSNOW (formerly MSNBC) by Carol Leonnig, a four-time Pulitzer prize winning investigative reporter, and Ken Dilanian begins:

Aides to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche directed the U.S. Attorney’s office and FBI agents based in Minnesota to shut down a civil rights investigation into an officer’s fatal shooting of Renee Good and instead alter it to probe Good for possible criminal liability, according to three people briefed on the discussions.

After Good was killed on Jan. 7, FBI agents drafted a search warrant to obtain her car to reconstruct the path of bullets that an ICE officer shot into the vehicle. But they were instructed to redraft their warrant and change the subject of the investigation from a civil rights probe to an investigation into a suspected assault on an officer, the people said. A federal magistrate judge rejected that warrant, noting that Good was already dead and could not be considered a suspect for a warrant.

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