Vice President JD Vance Opts Not to Apologize for Fueling Claim Alex Pretti Was an ‘Assassin’

JD Vance is making it clear he doesn’t regret the narrative he has perpetuated about Alex Pretti.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail on Tuesday, February 3, the vice president, 41, discussed the death of Pretti, who was fatally shot by ICE officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24, amid the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

“Do you plan to apologize to the family of Alex Pretti?” the reporter asked Vance, to which he responded, “For what?”

The reporter clarified the apology would be for “labeling” Pretti — who worked as an ICU nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center — as “an assassin with ill intent.”

“Well, again, I just described to you what I said about Alex Pretti, which is that he’s a guy who showed up with ill intent to an ICE protest,” Vance stated.

“If something is determined that the guy who shot Alex Pretti did something bad, then a lot of consequences are going to flow from that. We’ll let that happen, but again, I don’t think it’s smart to prejudge the investigation,” he continued. “I don’t think it’s fair to those ICE officers. I think we should let the investigation actually figure out what happened. What were those guys thinking? What was their reasonable fear or not when they engaged in that shooting? Let’s actually let the investigation happen.”

On the day Pretti was killed, Democratic Senator of Connecticut Chris Murphy posted on X, “1. ICE must leave Minneapolis. 2. Congress should not fund this version of ICE – that is seeking confirmation, chaos and dystopia.”

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller replied, “An assassin tried to murder federal agents, and this is your response.” Despite video footage showing no evidence of Pretti trying to shoot officers, Vance reposted Miller’s statement on his X account and has not taken it down.

As Globe previously reported, multiple videos of Pretti’s interaction with ICE agents show he was filming them with a cell phone and was subsequently pinned to the ground and pepper-sprayed. After an agent seemed to emerge with a gun, Pretti — who was licensed to carry a firearm — was shot 10 times in less than five seconds, according to ABC News.