Lawmakers’ racial dispute mars Cohen hearing – AOL
Uploaded by on February 28, 2019 at 8:54 am
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An already tense hearing involving former Trump fixer Michael Cohen got heated when a Democratic congresswoman and a Republican congressman traded accusations of racism.
The flareup started when Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., was questioning Cohen and took a swipe at Rep. Mark Meadows for bringing Lynne Patton, a black woman who’s friends with the Trump family and works for the federal government, to the hearing as a “prop.” Meadows had presented Patton to the hearing to push back against Cohen’s claims that the president is a racist.
“Just because someone has a person of color, a black person, working for them does not mean they aren’t racist, and it is insensitive that some would even say — the fact that someone would actually use a prop, a black woman, in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself,” the freshman Democrat said.
An angry Meadows demanded Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, strike her comments from the record. “I’m sure she didn’t intend to do this, but if anyone knows my record as it relates, it should be you, Mr. Chairman,” he said to Cummings.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C, center, Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., right, and other conservative Republicans discuss their goal of obstructing the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, as part of a strategy to pass legislation to fund the government, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Representative Mark Meadows, a Republican from North Carolina, listens as comments made by Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, not pictured, are reviewed a House Oversight Comittee hearing with Michael Cohen, former personal lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2019. Cohen brought documents to Wednesday’s congressional hearing to back up his case that his former boss is a ‘con man’ and ‘a cheat.’ Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Republican House Oversight Committee and Government Reform Committee members, from left, Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., listen on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 7, 2016, as FBI Director James Comey, right, testifies before the committee’s hearing to explain his agency’s recommendation to not prosecute Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over her private email setup during her time as secretary of state. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., left, chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., right, walk to a meeting of House Republicans as work in Congress resumes following the August recess, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017. Meadows is opposed to suggestions by GOP leaders to connect the urgent Harvey aid bill to increasing the U.S. debt limit. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., objects to House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Elijah Cummings, D-Md., efforts to subpoena Trump administration officials over family separations at the southern border, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019. The committee voted to subpoena Trump administration officials over family separations at the southern border, the first issued in the new Congress as Democrats have promised to hold the administration aggressively to count. The decision by the Oversight Committee will compel the heads of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to deliver documents. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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Asked to clarify her remarks, Tlaib said, “I’m just saying that’s what I believe to have happened and as a person of color in this committee that’s how I felt at that moment, and I wanted to express that. But I am not calling the gentleman, Mr. Meadows, a racist for doing so. I’m saying in itself it is a racist act.”
The North Carolina Republican and close Trump ally denied he’d used Patton as a prop — and said that accusation was racist.
“To indicate that I asked someone who is a personal friend of the Trump family, who has worked for him, who knows this particular individual, that she’s coming in to be a prop — it’s racist to suggest that I ask her to come in here for that reason,” he said. “She loves this family. She came in because she felt like the president of the United States was getting falsely accused.”
He said he took the accusation especially personally because “my nieces and nephews are people of color. Not many people know that. You know that, Mr. Chairman.”
Cummings responded that he could “see and feel” Meadows’ pain, and referred to him as “one of my best friends” before giving Tlaib another opportunity to clarify her remarks.
She maintained it wasn’t her intention to call Meadows a racist and said, “I do apologize if that’s what it sounded like.”
“As everybody knows in this chamber I’m pretty direct so if I wanted to say that I would have, but that’s not what I said,” she said.
In this Nov. 6, 2008 file photo, Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat, is photographed outside the Michigan Capitol in Lansing, Mich. The Michigan primary victory of Tlaib, who is expected to become the first Muslim woman and Palestinian-American to serve in the U.S. Congress, is rippling across the Middle East. In the West Bank village where Tlaib’s mother was born, residents are greeting the news with a mixture of pride and hope that she will take on a U.S. administration widely seen as hostile to the Palestinian cause.
(AP Photo/Al Goldis, File)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., left, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., right, laugh as they wait for other freshman Congressmen to deliver a letter calling to an end to the government shutdown to deliver to the office of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Ky., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
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Patton, now an official at the U.S. Department of Housing and Development, made her unusual cameo appearance earlier in the hearing.
“I asked Lynne to come today,” Meadows told Cohen as she stood behind the congressman.
“You made some very demeaning comments about the president Ms. Patton doesn’t agree with. She says as a daughter of a man born in Birmingham, Alabama, there’s no way she would work for an individual who’s a racist. How do you reconcile that? “
Cohen responded, “Ask Ms. Patton how many people who are black are executives at the Trump Organization. The answer is zero.”
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