When Donald Trump vowed to go after his political enemies if he returned to the White House, he wasn’t joking.
One of the people on his list of targets is none other than LaMonica McIver, the New Jersey Democratic Congresswoman who has been charged by the Department of Justice for allegedly “assaulting, impeding, and interfering with law enforcement” during a routine oversight visit to an ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey last May, that devolved into all-out chaos.
“They tried to stop us from going in to have oversight,” McIver tells Mehdi.
She was never arrested on the day of the oversight visit, and is now the only lawmaker facing charges – which could land her up to 17 years in prison. “If they [the Trump administration] can do what they can to me and other members of Congress that we’ve seen happen, imagine what they’re doing in the dark,” she says of the Trump administration.
Nevertheless, Rep. McIver continues to speak out against ICE’s lawlessness: “I think a lot of people have to be prosecuted and held accountable, including Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi... I think they’ve committed crimes and I think that they have to be held responsible for those.”
In this wide-ranging interview, Rep. McIver also talks to Mehdi about:
The White House’s smear campaign against her
Whether Democratic Party leadership is fit for this moment
The ongoing DHS shutdown
Trump’s war in Iran
The effort to censure Reps. Randy Fine and Andy Ogles over their Islamophobic statements.
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