House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the Trump administration of “clearly trying to intimidate Democrats” after federal agents handcuffed one of Rep. Jerry Nadler’s aides in his Manhattan office.
The Department of Homeland Security stormed into Nadler’s (D-NY) Big Apple office last week and alleged that his staff was “harboring rioters.” Jeffries (D-NY) largely refrained from delving too much into the specifics of the altercation, but slammed the administration.
“I think the administration is clearly trying to intimidate Democrats, in the same way that they’re trying to intimidate the country,” Jeffries told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Jeffries previously dubbed the arresting of Congressional Democrats a “red line,” but caveated that Dems will decide how to respond “in a time, place, and manner of our choosing.”
“Let me make clear that the House is a separate and co-equal branch of government, the Congress,” he added earlier in the interview. “We don’t work for Donald Trump. We don’t work for the administration.”
“We work for the American people.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul similarly ripped into the dramatic encounter.
“Unbelievable. Unbelievable, that’s my reaction to it,” Hochul told The Post Sunday.
Nadler has publicly decried the altercation at his lower Manhattan office that transpired last Wednesday and faulted the Trump administration for “sowing chaos in our communities.”
The aide had been briefly detained by the feds after observing agents nabbing migrants in the hallways. Nadler’s Manhattan office is in the same building as an immigration courtroom.
Video of the wild confrontation swirled online Saturday. The Department of Homeland Security had claimed that “one individual became verbally confrontational and physically blocked access to the office,” which led to the brief detention of Nadler’s aide.
Nadler’s chief of staff, Robert Gottheim, ripped into DHS’ characterization of events, suggesting that the agents seemed agitated after potential wrongdoing was called out, the New York Times reported.
Democrats have had similar high-profile run-ins with law enforcement over recent weeks.
Last month, the feds slapped a criminal complaint against Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) for assault following a skirmish with agents at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.
McIver had allegedly been trying to prevent the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka at that facility.
“We have publicly responded in a variety of different ways,” Jeffries told “State of the Union” regarding such instances broadly. “We haven’t let our foot off the gas pedal.”
“Donald Trump has learned an important lesson,” he later added. “The American people aren’t interested in bending the knee to a wannabe king. It’s the reason why Donald Trump actually is the most unpopular president at this point of a presidency in American history.”
Additional reporting by Steve Vago.
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