JD Vance Slammed After Refusing To Apologize To Alex Pretti's Family For Sharing Tweet Calling Him An 'Assassin'

Vice President JD Vance was criticized after refusing to apologize to the family of Alex Pretti after sharing White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's post claiming Pretti was an "assassin."

Calls for an investigation have intensified from across the political spectrum after analysis of multiple videos showed ICE officers removing a handgun from Pretti—a weapon that authorities said Pretti was permitted to carry but was not handling at the time—before fatally shooting him.

---

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other officials claimed Pretti had brandished a weapon and that agents fired “defensive shots,” assertions that have been contradicted by video evidence showing Pretti holding a phone and not brandishing a gun.

The Trump administration's critics have since called out the hypocrisy of officials who've previously praised armed right-wing protesters but are now attacking Pretti, a legal gun owner with a valid Minnesota concealed-carry permit.

Almost immediately after Pretti's murder on January 24, Miller, replying to Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, called Pretti an "assassin" who "tried to murder federal agents"—a lie that Vance retweeted to his own followers.

@StephenM/X; @ChrisMurphyCT/X

Vance later took to X to shift the blame away from federal agents and toward local authorities and protesters, alleging there is now “chaos” caused by state and local officials’ refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

And now he had this to say after Daily Mail reporters asked him if the agents who killed Pretti should face criminal charges if an investigation found they violated Pretti's civil rights:

"I think we should follow the law. You're asking me to engage in a hypothetical. I'm not going to pre-judge these guys. I think that everybody is deserved the presumption of innocence in the American system of justice."

"That's how it's going to work. They're going to investigate. If they find out that he violated the law, of course, you should face consequences for violating the law. But I'm not going to engage in conjecture about the different permutations of how this or that officer might have violated the law."

"Let's do the investigation. Let's figure out, did these officers have a reasonable fear of Alex Pretti given what happened? Did they engage in lawful conduct or unlawful conduct? Let's let the investigation determine those things."

Vance was then asked directly whether he had apologized to Pretti’s family. “For what?” he replied, smiling as he put his hypocrisy about "pre-judging" people without knowing the facts on full display.

When the interviewer specified that an apology might be warranted for labeling Pretti “an assassin with ill intent,” Vance said:

"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. ... So if this hypothetical leads to that hypothetical leads to another hypothetical, will I do a thing? And again, like I said, we're going to let the investigation determine."

"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, I don't think it's fair to those ICE officers."

You can hear his response in the video below.

Vance was slammed after footage of his remarks went viral.

New national polling conducted fully after Pretti's killing shows that a majority of Americans see the incident as emblematic of excessive force by federal agents and are skeptical of the government’s account.

An Ipsos survey found that 55% of respondents said Pretti’s killing involved “excessive force,” compared with just 16% who said it was “necessary,” a roughly 3-to-1 margin against the federal agents involved—an even stronger verdict than earlier public reaction to the killing of Renée Nicole Good.

A Quinnipiac University poll similarly found that 62% of registered voters said Pretti’s shooting was “not justified,” compared with 22% who said it was justified, with opposition to the agents’ actions growing most sharply among Republicans between the two events.

These polls also suggest broad backlash to the administration’s handling of the case: a Quinnipiac survey found 61% of voters believe the Trump administration has not given an honest account of the shooting, and 80% said there should be an independent investigation into the incident.