Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that she did not body slam anyone during the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka at the Delaney Hall Detention Center last week.
Host Dana Bash said, “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. 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?”
McIver said, “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. 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. 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.”
Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNEN
