Has a video interview of Alex Pretti talking about how he kicked out the taillight of an SUV used by federal agents emerged and sent "shockwaves through the public"? No, that's not true: No such video has been found. The quotes are all made up. The website and Facebook pages spreading the claim are part of a spam network based in Vietnam that uses AI tools to target Americans and Europeans with fake clickbait. We call it Viet Spam.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) shared by the Behind Spox Stage Facebook page on January 30, 2026. The text read:
'Even when I held my ground, I never lost faith in truth,' Alex Pretti shared in a rare, poignant statement after new footage emerged, revealing how he kicked out a federal agents' SUV taillight during a protest -- a moment tangled with conflicting accounts of his intentions. The video subtly exposes hidden pressures and sharp reactions by the agents, adding deeper tension to the already fraught narrative. It has sent shockwaves through the public conversation, intensifying scrutiny of federal force and reigniting debate over what really happened in Minneapolis.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Jan 31 18:13:23 2026 UTC)
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook)
A Google search (archived here) for the terms "pretti video interview kicked taillight" returned no results about an Alex Pretti interview video about anything emerging. The search was dominated by videos of a January 13, 2026 protest on a Minneapolis street during which a man, who appears to be Pretti, kicks out the taillight of an SUV used by federal agents. This was 11 days before Pretti was shot to death by federal agents during another street protest.
The Facebook fan page that published the fictional story about Pretti is managed from Vietnam, according to Meta's transparency data (archived here).
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook)
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country. You can see recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country here. This is part of a pattern of Viet Spam stories about Pretti.
The Facebook post links to an article (archived here) that opens with the same text as the post, but offers a purported source of the video:
Newly obtained footage reviewed by The Independent has shed further light on the tense confrontation between federal immigration agents and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on January 13, revealing a chaotic scene that unfolded days before Pretti was fatally shot by Border Patrol officers.
The claim that The Independent newspaper, which has been reporting extensively on the death of Pretti, was the source of the video discovery is not supported by a search of the newspaper for the terms "Pretti video." No such video was found.
(Image source: Lead Stories GIF recording of the-independent.com)
