Authenticated footage shows Pretti, who had no known criminal record and had a permit to carry a concealed firearm, stepping in front of a woman being pepper-sprayed by an agent before being restrained himself. One agent removed Pretti’s pistol, which he had not drawn, and then another shot him repeatedly in the back. Witnesses corroborated the details in the videos.
The flurry of online activity echoed the broader political narratives that emerged after the shooting. Top Trump administration officials have repeatedly lodged unsubstantiated accusations of domestic terrorism against Pretti, who was pinned down and had been disarmed when agents opened fire.
Some conservative accounts pushed back against the Trump administration’s narrative. Responding to the Trump administration’s suggestion that Pretti wanted to “massacre” law enforcement, Tim Pool, a right-wing podcaster, wrote on X that Pretti “clearly was not intending to massacre ICE”.
Still, many social media users repeated the Trump administration’s representation of events. Others posted images of the scene misleadingly altered with artificial intelligence.
One image, for example, was edited to depict Pretti pointing a gun at an agent, though he was actually holding a phone. Another was altered with Gemini, Google’s AI tool, supposedly to enhance and sharpen it to reveal key details about the scene. The altered image included obvious errors, including changes to Pretti’s face. It also removed a gun from the agent’s hand, fueling more debate on social media over what had happened.
© New York Times
