In a head-scratcher of a response to getting caught on tape assaulting federal agents with ICE and Homeland Security, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) said, during a Sunday, May 11, appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” that she did not, in fact, “body slam” anyone during the chaotic fight at Newark, New Jersey’sDelaney Hall Detention Center on Friday, May 9. Her insistence on the matter came despite video evidence to the contrary, which she claimed wasn’t real.
As background, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) opened a detention facility in Newark, NJ, called Delaney Hall. Democrats, apparently falsely, insisted that it didn’t have the right permits and was immoral, so a number of Democratic members of Congress from New Jersey, including Rep. McIver, arrived at it, ostensibly to tour it, alongside Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.
That turned into an apparent riot or scuffle between a gaggle of leftist protesters and federal agents, and the federal authorities arrested Mayor Baraka during that fight. It was in the scuffle surrounding his arrest and their alleged trespass onto the facility that Rep. McIver was caught on tape assaulting federal agents while yelling at them.
But then, when she appeared on Sunday, May 12, on CNN’s “State of the Union” with host Dana Bash, Rep. McIver insisted that, in reality, she did not, as the Department of Homeland Security claimed, “body slam” any agents during the scuffle-filled incident outside of the Delaney Hall Detention Center.
That came when Bash broached the subject and asked if she was the woman in the red blazer who was seen on tape attacking agents. She began by saying, describing the chaos, “I want to go back to some of the footage we were looking at, at some, and I want our viewers to see that you are the woman in the red blazer as we show them, DHS says that obviously that there were chaos, that maybe you were trespassing.”
Continuing, Bash asked directly if it was she who was caught on tape in the scuffle with DHS and ICE personnel, asking, “You can talk about that. But DHS also says that, in their words, you were body slamming an ICE officer. Is that what we’re looking at? Is that what happened?”
Responding, Rep. McIver avoided answering directly, not saying if she was the woman in red and instead commenting on whether she body slammed anyone, saying, “Absolutely no. I mean, I honestly do not know how to body slam anyone. There’s no video that supports me body slamming anyone. We, as Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman said we were simply there to do our job. There for an oversight visit.”
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Continuing, she went on to blame ICE for what happened, insinuating in the process that it was indeed her in the video, saying, “What you watch what you’re watching in the video, and we don’t have all of the body cam, and we hope that all of the body cam is released. It was a very tense situation. It unfortunately did not have to be like that. They created that confrontation.”
Concluding, she went on the attack against ICE for arresting the mayor, insisting as she did so that it was a problem merely because he was a public official, ignoring what he might have done that led to her arrest. She said, “They created that chaos and then ultimately went to arrest the mayor of the largest city of New Jersey, who is my mayor and my constituent. And it was very difficult to watch that happen. But absolutely, I did not body slam anyone.”
Watch her here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video