Trump wants honest investigation of Alex Pretti killing

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said “we’re going to de-escalate a bit,” referring to the situation in Minnesota on the heels of the controversial killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti by a federal agent in Minnesota over the weekend.

Trump’s comment came as he praised his border czar Tom Homan, whom he dispatched to Minnesota on Monday after outrage over the Trump administration’s initial response to Pretti’s death.

“He’s great,” Trump said of Homan during an interview with Fox News’ Will Cain.

“And they met with the governor, the mayor, everybody else, and we’ll, we’re going to de-escalate a little bit,” the president said.

On Sunday, several dozen major companies in Minnesota issued a statement calling for an “immediate deescalation of tensions” in the state on the heels of Pretti’s killing, which was the second time in several weeks that federal agents killed a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis.

The Trump administration has flooded that city with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and other Department of Homeland Security officers in what the administration has said is widespread fraud by immigrants there.

Trump earlier Tuesday told reporters that he wants “a very honorable and honest investigation” into the Pretti’s killing.

“We’re doing a big investigation,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

“I want to see the investigation, I’m going to be watching over it,” he said. “I want to see it myself.”

Shortly after Trump spoke, MS Now, citing three people briefed on the matter, reported that the Department of Justice had decided not to conduct a civil rights investigation of Pretti’s death.

“And instead two units of the Department of Homeland Security will investigate their officers and the man they killed,” MS Now reported.

Trump’s comments were the latest in a series of recent statements and moves by him and the White House that have sought to dial back his administration’s initially bellicose comments on Pretti’s killing on Saturday in Minneapolis.

Pretti’s death came weeks after an ICE agent in the city fatally shot the U.S. citizen and mother-of-three Renee Good, as she attempted to drive away from another agent telling her to exit her car.

On Monday, Trump said that Homan would go to Minnesota to manage ICE‘s on-the-ground operations there.

Homan reportedly has been at odds with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who initially called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who wanted “to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”

“Tom Homan … is in Minnesota now, he’s meeting with governor [Tim Walz], and he’s meeting with the mayor [Jacob Frey], I think later,” Trump said. “And I hear that’s all going very well.”

Trump spoke on the phone with Walz and Frey on Monday. Both officials are Democrats who for weeks have been strongly critical of the Trump administration’s surge of immigration enforcement officers to Minneapolis and elsewhere.

On Monday, multiple news outlets reported that Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander at large, was leaving Minneapolis, where his comments on Pretti’s death and other immigration-enforcement related issues had inflamed tensions.

Bovino had claimed that Pretti, who had a licensed handgun on his person at the time of the confrontation with federal agents, may have intended to “massacre law enforcement.”

Noem and Bovino’s claims have been undercut by videos taken of Pretti’s shooting, which shows him on the ground when he is apparently shot from behind by an agent.

During an interview with Fox News’ Will Cain on Tuesday, Trump was asked if Homan’s arrival and Bovino’s departure were a “pullback.”

“I don’t think it’s a pullback. It’s a little bit of a change,” Trump said.

“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,” the president said.

“And in some cases, that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good here.”