Fox News Host Did Not Back Down While Grilling Deputy AG About Pretti Shooting

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche was likely not expecting this level of heat from a “Fox & Friends” host.

On Monday’s episode of the Fox News show, co-host Griff Jenkins had a pointed exchange with Blanche about statements from Department of Homeland Security officials after 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Pretti was fatally shot by Border Patrol in Minneapolis on Saturday.

Pretti was wrestled to the ground by at least six masked federal agents and fatally wounded after 10 shots were fired. DHS later alleged in a statement that Pretti had “violently resisted” officers, despite eyewitness video showing otherwise.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller both baselessly labeled Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and claimed he set out to kill law enforcement officers.

Jenkins kicked off his grilling of Blanche by citing reporting from his colleague, Bill Melugin — who posted on X that “half a dozen federal sources involved [in] immigration enforcement” have become “increasingly uneasy and frustrated” with the department’s messaging since the shooting.

Jenkins quoted extensively from Melugin’s post, which said: “There is extreme internal frustration with DHS officials going on television and putting out statements to describe Alex Pretti as a domestic terrorist who was there to inflict maximum damage on federal agents or conduct a massacre, even after multiple videos emerged, to show that these claims appeared to be inaccurate.”

Jenkins then cited a source of Melugin’s who reportedly said DHS’s response was a “case study on how not to do crisis PR.”

Afterward, the host asked Blanche a simple question: “Todd, I ask you, based on the DOJ’s purview, do the actions of Alex Pretti amount to domestic terrorism?”

“It’s an investigation, so I’m not going to prejudge what his actions were or were not,” Blanche said before launching into an attack on political leadership in Minnesota.

But Jenkins wasn’t having it and eventually cut Blanche off.

“With all due respect, sir, my question is more pointed,” Jenkins interjected.

“You are an attorney,” he said before citing the “legal definition of domestic terrorism” and adding that “it doesn’t appear to most of the country that have watched the available video … it does not appear to have met that definition of domestic terrorism. So, I’m just sort of wondering how you in the DOJ are viewing whether your colleagues may have gone too far?”

“Look, I don’t think anybody thinks that they were comparing what happened on Saturday to the legal definition of domestic terrorism,” Blanche said.

He added, “What we saw was a very violent altercation. And I am not going to prejudge the facts. You’re right, there’s a bunch of video that’s out there. There’s a bunch of video that we haven’t seen yet in the minutes leading up to what happened and what happened afterwards. And you’re right — to the extent there’s body cam or other videos that witnesses are still providing to us. So I’m not describing it as anything except for a tragedy.”

He then went on to bash Minneapolis and its leadership.

Watch the full exchange below.