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Imagine if this series of events happened in a foreign country: A prosecutor who is most notable for being the president’s former personal lawyer, and who is not legally confirmed to her role, charges a member of the opposition party with serious crimes based on trumped-up evidence, and then announces it not on a government platform but on the social-media site owned by the president’s friend and major donor. What would outsiders conclude about the strength of democracy and rule of law in that country?
Yesterday, interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba announced that she was charging Representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat whose district includes the city of Newark, with assaulting federal agents. McIver reportedly faces several criminal charges related to an incident at Delaney Hall, a privately operated immigrant-detention facility in Newark. Mayor Ras Baraka contends that the prison was operating without a certificate of occupancy, and city officials cited code violations. Baraka, who visited repeatedly and demanded access, was blocked from entering.
On May 9, Baraka visited again, this time with three members of Congress, including McIver. He was initially invited through a gate but then asked to leave, which he did. After he’d stepped outside, federal agents pursued him on public property. A chaotic scrum followed, and Baraka was arrested. Although federal officials derided Baraka for a political stunt, this was a stunt of their own making, and the trespassing charge against Baraka never seemed likely to stick.
Indeed, Habba dropped it yesterday and brought charges against McIver instead. You can watch the videos and decide for yourself—McIver is the one in the red blazer—but calling this an assault is a big stretch; as agents and politicians jostle, McIver elbows an an officer, who is facing away and barely reacts. (People are sometimes charged with assaulting police for no more than incidental contact, even when no reasonable layperson would identify what happened as “assault.”) Implicitly acknowledging the flimsiness of the claim, Habba wrote in her statement that she “persistently made efforts to address these issues without bringing criminal charges,” but added that it was her “Constitutional obligation to ensure that our federal law enforcement is protected when executing their duties.”
Interpreting this as anything other than an attempt to punish criticism and intimidate Democrats is difficult. Prosecuting members of Congress, including those in the opposition party, is not inherently inappropriate—plenty of politicians break the law—but the circumstances here demand close scrutiny. (McIver denies any assault; her lawyer called the charges “spectacularly inappropriate.”)
One might grant the charges more benefit of the doubt if not for Donald Trump’s open desire to turn the Justice Department into a tool of political retribution, or his previous record of downplaying attacks against law enforcement. The president has fired career prosecutors, revoked the security clearances of his critics, and installed as FBI director a guy who once threatened to “come after” Trump critics. DOJ has opened an investigation into the leading Democratic fundraising platform on shaky premises. Trump picked a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia who so overstepped his bounds while serving on an interim basis that even Republican senators couldn’t stomach confirming him; instead Trump appointed him head of a DOJ “Weaponization Working Group,” an unintentionally revealing name. The Justice Department obtained an indictment against a Wisconsin state judge for obstructing an immigration arrest (she pleaded not guilty), and Attorney General Pam Bondi specifically described the charges as a warning to other judges who might flout the administration.
Considering two analogous cases offers more reason to treat the charges against McIver as political intimidation. One is a different incident involving a member of Congress, Florida Republican Cory Mills. In February, police in D.C. responded to a call where a woman, described as Mills’s “significant other” in police reports, was freshly bruised, and police listened to Mills encourage her to lie about an altercation on the phone. (Both Mills and the woman have since said there was no violence.) The U.S. attorney for D.C. declined to take up the case.
The second is the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. The Justice Department has filed to dismiss cases against rioters, fired prosecutors involved in such cases, and pardoned some people sentenced to prison for their involvement, including those who injured police officers. This week, news emerged that the Justice Department is close to paying a $5 million settlement to the family of Ashli Babbitt, a woman fatally shot by Capitol police while trying to storm the Speaker’s Lobby of the Capitol. These are not the actions of an administration with a serious commitment to defending federal law-enforcement officers.
After the May 9 incident at the immigration-detention facility, Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries warned the administration against punishing any of the members of Congress in attendance. “That’s a red line. It’s a red line, it’s very clear,” he said. Now the administration has crossed that line by charging LaMonica McIver. As with many of Trump’s moves, it’s a test of the system: How will courts, Congress, and above all the American people respond? If they allow Trump to succeed, he’ll have taken a major step toward making dissent illegal.
Related:
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- The congressman who saw the truth about Biden
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- Mark Leibovich: The story about Biden getting old is getting old.
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Today’s News
- President Donald Trump announced that $25 billion in initial funding would be set aside for a Golden Dome missile-defense program, which would take years to build.
- Trump met with House Republicans in an effort to persuade them to unify behind his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
- A maintenance worker was arrested for allegedly facilitating the escape of 10 inmates from a New Orleans jail, four of whom have been recaptured.
Evening Read
Germany Arrests King Peter I, the Son of Man, the Messiah
By Graeme Wood
Last week, Germany arrested Peter Fitzek, 59, an anti-government figure also known as King Peter I, the Son of Man, the Messiah. Historically, attempts to arrest messiahs have met with mixed results, so to stay on the safe side, the Interior Ministry not only rolled up Fitzek and three conspirators but also shut down his whole operation, known as the Kingdom of Germany. Subjects of King Peter deny the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany and, over the past 13 years, have built up a counter-state with its own institutions. “In Germany, just like in the rest of the world, we have a lot of problems,” Peter told me in 2023. “These problems could not be solved in the old system, so we needed a completely new one.”
More From The Atlantic
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- Jonathan Chait: Kristi Noem is dangerously ignorant.
- The Trump administration is tempting a honeybee disaster.
- The Founders would have hated Trump’s luxury jet.
- The neo-anti-vaxxers are in power now.
Culture Break
Turn heads. No one is better at being looked at than Kim Kardashian, Ellen Cushing writes. The diamonds she wore in court sent a message, and not a particularly subtle one.
The view from L.A. No one knows how to “save” Hollywood, David Sims writes. Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on movies seized upon the American film industry’s existential panic.
Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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