Representative Angie Craig released audio of vulgar and threatening phone messages she says she has received since she was attacked last week in the elevator of her apartment building near the Capitol.
(Bloomberg) — Representative Angie Craig released audio of vulgar and threatening phone messages she says she has received since she was attacked last week in the elevator of her apartment building near the Capitol.
The Minnesota Democrat’s office blamed “gutter politics,” pointing to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and officials at House Republicans’ political arm who, Craig says, have distorted her record on police funding since the attack.
The calls included lewd and graphic suggestions that Craig deserved the attack, expressions of hope that she is targeted again, and statements that the police should do nothing if she is assailed again.
Craig, 51, who is in her third term, said she is filing a complaint with police.
Fox News did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Will Reinert, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said “no one condones violence against elected officials.” But Reinert then went on to allege that Craig is aligned with “extremists” who want to defund the police.
A Capitol Police spokesman said the agency does not comment about investigations. A law enforcement official on Capitol Hill said there are concerns that lawmakers’ publicly releasing such audio of harassing calls could inspire more threats.
“We are sharing these difficult messages to help everyone understand the impact of this careless rhetoric and what happens after these reckless political attacks,” Craig’s communications director Laura Cottrell, said. “It’s dangerous. It’s gutter politics at its worst.”
Craig escaped last week by tossing hot coffee on her assailant after he followed her into the elevator and punched her.
Police arrested a suspect, Kendrick Khalil Hamlin, later that night and charged him with simple assault. During an interview Tuesday on “CBS Mornings,” Craig said Hamlin, 26, had been arrested multiple times in the last decade but not “prosecuted fully.”
A. J. Kramer, the Federal Public Defender for the District of Columbia representing Hamlin, had no comment. Police have said Hamlin does not have an address.
Craig blasted Pirro’s “false attacks” on her record of police support during a Wednesday show, which she said was working from opposition research released earlier in the day by the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“I have a great idea,” Pirro said on her show. “And I think that idea is, if you want to defund the police, we’ll notify 9-1-1, whenever you call ‘em, you don’t get the police.”
Craig countered by releasing a list of police endorsements and legislative actions she said illustrates that she has been a supporter of law enforcement, including opposing “defund the police” efforts.
“Harassing the victim of a violent crime on national television is abhorrent behavior. The messages and threats received by Representative Craig’s office following the NRCC hit job and Fox News’ false and inflammatory coverage of her assault represent the worst of our society,” said Cottrell.
The episode occurred after Capitol Police last month said threats against lawmakers decreased in 2022. One of the most prominent cases of lawmaker-directed violence occurred last October, when an intruder broke into then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked her husband, Paul Pelosi.
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