Newsmax's senior judicial analyst says federal agents who shot Alex Pretti should be indicted for murder
Andrew Napolitano: “They shot him in the back while he was on his belly on the ground. That's called murder.” ... “They had the weapon in their hands at the time they shot him in the back. There's no justification for that under the law whatsoever.”
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From the January 26, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Wake Up America
SHARLA MCBRIDE (HOST): Let's break down what we know. So the protester who was killed, Alex Pretti, he was a lawful gun owner with a permit to carry. Now, the Department of Homeland Security claims that it's unlawful for protesters to carry a gun. What's your take on all of this?
ANDREW NAPOLITANO (SENIOR JUDICIAL ANALYST): Well, the Supreme Court has likened the Second Amendment to the First. It's not a secondary amendment, and the right to keep and bear arms is in the same category from an after two Supreme Court opinions, one called Heller, the other called McDonald, which say, just as you have the right to speak freely on political matters, you have the right, when licensed by the state to carry the gun. And the police can no more take your gun away from you than they could silence you. In this particular case, they did remove his gun. I understand them removing his gun if they're going to restrain him.
MCBRIDE: Right.
NAPOLITANO: Then they shot him in the back while he was on his belly on the ground. That's called murder. And that's an issue that the feds are going to have to work with. And the state, once it gets the evidence in the case, is going to have to work with.
MCBRIDE: Well, and I think, you know, they didn't realize that he had a gun because it doesn't seem like, from previous videos we've seen, he didn't have his hands up. He wasn't announcing that he had a weapon. So I think if they're trying to detain him and then they find a weapon, that's cause for, again, taking that weapon as they did.
NAPOLITANO: They removed the weapon. They had the weapon in their hands at the time they shot him in the back. There's no justification for that under the law whatsoever. There's also no justification for removing the weapon from him unless they're going to arrest him.
MCBRIDE: OK.
NAPOLITNO: It's not clear if they're arresting him. It appears that they are restraining him. And arrest is defined as you're no longer free to move. At some point, he was no longer free to move. And when he's no longer free to move, yes, the police can take the weapon from him for their safety's sake. Not before that, but at the time they decide to restrain him. But once restrained, he can't be shot.
MCBRIDE: So we know that he was a lawful gun owner. He had a permit to carry a weapon. So then my question is, did he have to let agents know that he was armed? Is that part of the law as well?
NAPOLITANO: When you have a confrontation with the police and you were not free to leave and they don't know you're armed because Minnesota, unlike Texas, but Minnesota, New Jersey, states like that, New York is concealed carry. You may not expose the gun. Kristi Noem said he was brandishing the gun. If you look at the videos, he never touched the gun. We don't know if he told them that he had the gun. They obviously saw it and removed it from him while he was still standing. At the time they removed it, he's no longer a threat to them.
MCBRIDE: So where do you think this goes from here? What happens now?
NAPOLITNO: He should be -- they have to identify who the officers were who shot them, and those officers should be indicted for murder by the feds. I don't know if the feds are going to do that. State is going to want to charge them, but they can't really charge them without evidence. The only evidence the state has are the videos that we all saw.
MCBRIDE: Right.
NAPOLITANO: They need forensic evidence taken from Alex's body, and they need interviews, transcripts of interviews with witnesses and with the agents themselves. Only the feds have that. State is going to be in federal court this morning asking for that. A federal judge on Saturday night -- very unusual for federal judges to meet on Saturday night -- ordered the feds to preserve the evidence, and then she will decide when they are finished with it, whether or not it should be made available to the state. It has to be made available to the state. Under the Constitution, health and safety are state concerns. You can't have police shooting somebody in the back on the street, and the state doesn't have the evidence of it.
MCBRIDE: Yeah, this is not going away any time soon.