US Democratic Congresswoman LaMonica McIver has been indicted for “forcibly impeding and interfering” with federal law enforcement over a recent confrontation outside an immigration centre.
A scuffle occurred during her visit to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) centre in Newark, New Jersey, on 9 May.
The incident drew widespread attention, as it unfolded at a time when the Republican administration of US President Donald Trump has faced sharp criticism from opposing Democrats over its hard-line approach to immigration.
Ms McIver, who faces a maximum term of 17 years in prison, has called the charges a “brazen attempt at political intimidation” and says she will plead not guilty.
A federal grand jury in New Jersey brought the three-count indictment against Ms McIver on Tuesday. It replaces the two assault charges that she previously faced.
Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250611122745/https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2qzwrv26zo
Who was on this grand jury?
How were they selected?
Doesn’t matter. A Grand Jury proceeding, as I understand it, is almost always controlled by the prosecutor and results in an indictment if they want it to.
There’s no defense present or argument against indicting, it’s just a prosecutor explaining why they think there should be an indictment and presenting their “case”.
I think we can safely assume the DOJ prosecutor is operating on political orders and not in service of the country or the law.
I believe the old adage is that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. It’ll be interesting to see what steps are taken to either turn the inevitable trial into either a political stage show, or a black box tribunal. If they think they can spin it hard enough that their propaganda machine can make this woman look like she did something wrong, we’ll get that option. And I think that’s most likely, since it’s black woman and attacking her will be easy to get the base onboard for. But if they claim its all “national security” issues and refuse to have any press attention, we’ll know they have less than nothing.
Either way, anyone paying attention saw the original footage last month knows these people did nothing wrong.
I’m going to get darker than is probably warranted for a moment, and just ask, how are none of these authoritarian shitbags not dead already? I know stochastic terrorism is primarily a right-winger trait, but no type of human ugliness is universal to just one side of the aisle. You’d think more people would be taking a crack at Stephen Miller, Russ Vought, Pam Bondi and the other ghouls.
Unless the criminal is a cop. Grand juries fail to indict well over 90% of the time if they are a “chosen white.”