The Arsonist Conducting the Pretti Investigation

As long as Noem’s DHS runs the probe in Alex Pretti's murder, the public will get a narrative, not the truth.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

Alex Pretti is dead, and the public was force-fed an official narrative by the Trump administration as quickly as the video spread.

That’s why I called John Sullivan — a former FBI chief intelligence officer who’s now running for Congress in NY-17 against Rep. Mike Lawler — to walk through what he sees when he watches the Pretti footage and listens to the government’s timeline. The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it will lead the investigation and Minnesota authorities said it has blocked state investigators from the scene.

Sullivan’s takeaway was blunt: this is what it looks like when the arsonist conducts the investigation.

In his view, the rush to certainty came before the basics that should anchor any officer-involved shooting inquiry: secure the scene, preserve evidence, collect all available video (body cam, bystander footage, nearby security cameras), and lock in witness statements while memories are fresh.

Sullivan also flagged three details that, to him, explain why people don’t trust what they’re being told.

First: the government framed Pretti as brandishing a gun, while widely shared footage appeared to show him holding a phone. You don’t get to build justification first and sort out facts later.

Second: He argued the officer involved should be on administrative leave during the investigation, not moved out of jurisdiction and put back to work, and that secrecy around identity only feeds suspicion that the system is protecting itself.

Third: Sullivan questioned why federal leadership would block or sideline state and local authorities. His view: if DHS controls the probe, it controls the conclusions.

From there, Sullivan zoomed out. He described what he says is a broader shift under FBI Director Kash Patel: roughly 20% of manpower pulled from traditional FBI priorities and pushed toward immigration enforcement, with knock-on effects for public corruption, cyber, counterterrorism, and organized crime work. He warned about commingling ICE and FBI operations — and about pressure to scrutinize protesters through “pre-assessments,” even when the underlying activity is protected by the First Amendment.

And then we got into what Sullivan sees as Patel’s “photo op” culture: a leadership style that, in his telling, prioritizes provocation and optics over the slower discipline of building a case. He pointed to reporting that Patel and his team were focused on messaging in the immediate aftermath of the Charlie Kirk shooting, rather than letting investigators work and evidence be secured. Sullivan also raised allegations about Patel’s use of bureau resources and personal-image chasing — from travel like misusing the FBI jet to go to sporting events and assigning a SWAT team to his girlfriend to a fixation on high-profile photo moments — warning that this kind of leadership doesn’t just look unserious; it can compromise trust inside the Bureau and outside it.

His bigger point is simple: in a moment like this, the country doesn’t need faster talking points. It needs a process the public can trust.