Grand Jury to Hear McKinney Run-In Case Apr 05 8:40 PM US/Eastern Email this story By LAURIE KELLMAN and MARK SHERMAN Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON A federal grand jury will soon begin hearing evidence about Rep. Cynthia McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Police officer, a lawyer familiar with the case said late Wednesday. The lawyer, who declined to be identified because of grand jury secrecy, confirmed that federal prosecutors had agreed to get involved in the case in which a black lawmaker is accused of striking a white officer after he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a security checkpoint. U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said McKinney turned the officer's failure to recognize her into a criminal matter when she failed to stop at his request, and then struck him. "He reached out and grabbed her and she turned around and hit him," Gainer said on CNN. "Even the high and the haughty should be able to stop and say, 'I'm a congressman' and then everybody moves on." "This is not about personality," added House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "It's not about racial profiling. It's about making this place safer." For her part, McKinney wasn't backing down from the argument. She charged anew that racism is behind what she said is a pattern of difficulty in clearing Hill security checkpoints. "This has become much ado about hairdo," she said Wednesday on CBS' "The Early Show." McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, recently dropped her trademark cornrows in favor of a curly brown afro. The police aren't the ones who are racist, one Republican said. "Cynthia McKinney is a racist," Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends," a day after abandoning his reelection bid under a cloud of ethics charges. "She has a long history of racism. Everything is racism with her. This is incredible arrogance that sometimes hits these members of Congress, but especially Cynthia McKinney." Last Wednesday's incident in a House office building has caused a commotion on Capitol Hill, where security in the era of terrorist threat is tighter than ever and where authorities had to order an evacuation just Monday because of a power outage. Capitol Police have turned the case over to U.S. Attorney Kenneth Wainstein, who must decide whether to clear the way for any charges against McKinney. An official in his office said no announcement was expected Wednesday. McKinney has garnered little support among fellow Democrats in her feud with the Capitol police. No one in her party chose to join her at a news conference last Friday to discuss the situation. Republicans, meanwhile, presented a resolution commending Capitol police for professionalism toward members of Congress and visitors _ even though they "endure physical and verbal assaults in some extreme cases." "I don't think it's fair to attack the Capitol Police and I think it's time that we show our support for them," said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R- N.C., a sponsor of the measure. Ignoring a police officer's order to stop, or hitting one, "is never OK," McHenry said. Some GOP members have said the McKinney incident serves to underscore Democratic insensitivity to security concerns. Gainer said that racism, however, was not a factor. "I've seen our officers stop white members and black members, Latinos, male and females," he told CNN. "It's not an issue about what your race or gender is. It's an issue about making sure people who come into our building are recognized if they're not going through the magnetometer, and this officer at that moment didn't recognize her." "It would have been real easy, as most members of Congress do, to say here's who I am or do you know who I am?" Gainer added. Police also have said that McKinney was failing to wear a pin that lawmakers are asked to display when entering Capitol facilities. But she said Wednesday: "Face recognition is the issue .... The pin doesn't have my name on it and it doesn't have my picture on it, and so security should not be based on a pin ... People are focused on my hairdo." "Something that perhaps the average American just doesn't understand is that there is a heightened sense of a lack of appropriateness being there for members who are elected who happen to be of color," McKinney said, "and until this issue is addressed by the American public in a very substantive way, it won't be the last time."
Interesting to see what the witnesses have to say. I went to the Honorable Cynthis McKinney's congressional website http://www.house.gov/mckinney/ and was suprised to find this message as the focal point of the front page: There's also a link entitled, "Legal Action By Black Officers Against Capitol Hill Police Department" which I took to be an action taken by some Black Officers in support of Ms McKinney. When I clicked on the link I found an Aug '03 article about a class action suit filed by some Black Officers in '01 - 5 years ago. It appears to be a workplace discrimination complaint rather than a suit about the profiling issue Ms. McKinney and her attorney claim. I found one paragraph in that Aug '03 article pertinent: From what's been reported it sounds like the Officer was guarding and protecting.
I've heard Ms. McKinney's attorney on two news shows tonight. He chided the officer for not recognizing all 535 members of Congress including some 40 black members, 14 of which he noted were women. He made no mention of any other black member, male OR female, being "profiled" by the cops. He refused to acknowledge that his client had struck the Officer citing legal code of ethics bar his discussing details of pending litigation. He then went on to note that no arrest was made. He pointed out that an arrest would have been made if anyone struck an officer. Of course the attorney did not mention that Article 1, Sec 6 of the US Constitution bars a member of Congress from being arrested while going to a session (which the Congresswoman claims she was doing as she was "late" for a "meeting". The attorney's characterization of the Capital Hill Officer's conduct is in sharp contrast with Ms. McKinney's public statement of March 29th on the incident: Ms. McKinney's statement fails to note that she struck the Officer. She deeply regrets the incident occurred but fails to apologize for hitting the guy doing his duty - guarding and protecting Congress and the public. I have no doubt that every day somebody in the world does get profiled. It's an insult that Ms McKinney tries to compare the consequences of HER hubris and HER disrespect for authority due to HER noncompliance of security procedures to those that suffer real injustices.
She's disgusting, they are trying very hard to make it all about race. Instead her failing to even aknowledge an officer who is trying to keep bad guys out of the area.
8) I knew if I lived long enough, I would find agreement with a kookie liberal some day and now its happened. When asked about the Cynthia McKinney situation, the Rev. Al Sharpton said simply, "The bitch is crazy."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Congresswoman Cynthia 'Zsa Zsa' McKinney's greatest hits -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 13, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 Laurence A. Elder 1989: Zsa Zsa Gabor, the actress, gets pulled over for a traffic violation. She gets out of the car and slaps the Beverly Hills Police officer. A jury convicts her of assault, and a judge sentences her to three days in jail and fines her $13,000. 2006: Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., reportedly walks around a metal detector at a security checkpoint while entering the Longworth House Office Building. She fails to wear her congressional ID pin, the wearing of which is not required, although most members do. A U.S. Capitol Police officer reportedly calls out to her, "Ma'am, Ma'am, Ma'am." But according to U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrence Gainer, Congresswoman McKinney failed to stop, so a Capitol Police officer grabbed her. McKinney, according to the police, spun around and struck the officer in the chest. Send in the clowns. McKinney first puts out a statement of relative contrition, in which she calls this an "unfortunate confrontation." But the next day – ta da! – she pulls out the race card. Now she claims that the officer engaged in "racial profiling." "This whole incident," said McKinney, "was instigated by the inappropriate touching and stopping of me, a female black congresswoman." Her attorney called it a case of "being in Congress while black." So add this to the long list of McKinney offenses, including many in which she used the race card as a shield or as a baseball bat. Let's go to the videotape: McKinney accused then presidential candidate Al Gore of engaging in "Jim Crow practices" by limiting the number of black agents assigned to his Secret Service detail. Her official Web page said: "Gore's Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I've never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time. I'm not shocked, but I am certainly saddened by this revelation." McKinney accused the White House of racism when the United States threatened to stay away from a 2001 U.N.-sponsored conference on racism if the agenda included talk of reparations for slavery and colonialism or a measure equating Zionism with racism. "Given that 30 percent of the U.S. population consists of people of color and that we have all experienced racism firsthand," said McKinney, "I have to wonder if the Bush administration's position ... is just politically dumb or if it is perhaps indicative of something more malignant ... I am compelled to ask the obvious question, then, that no one will ask: Is the Bush White House just full of latent racists?" Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani rejected a Saudi Arabian prince's $10 million offer for the victims' families of the World Trade Center attacks, because the offer came with a lecture about the "slaughter" of Palestinians "at the hands of the Israelis." Ms. McKinney wrote the prince a letter of apology, "Your Royal Highness, the state of black America is not good." She then uncorked a litany of black America's grievances, including, but not limited to, poverty, homelessness, hunger, an unfair criminal justice system, "health disparities" with blacks less likely to receive surgery than whites, and the demise of affirmative action. Magnanimously, she offered to provide names of charities that might benefit from the $10 mil. Just six months after the atrocities of Sept. 11, McKinney attacked the year-old Bush administration: "We know there were numerous warnings of the events to come on Sept. 11," she said on a radio station interview. "What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of Sept. 11? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered?" Two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, McKinney read Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff the headline: "Nursing Home Owners Charged in Deaths," in the case of 44 patients who were not evacuated in New Orleans. "Mr. Secretary, if the nursing-home owners are arrested for negligent homicide, why shouldn't you also be arrested for negligent homicide?" McKinney said. "It seems that chaos was the plan that was implemented. Leadership, Mr. Secretary, was lacking." In December 2005, McKinney still claimed Katrina equaled racism: "Racism is something we don't like to talk about, but we have to acknowledge it," McKinney said. "And the world saw the effects of American-style racism in the drama as it was outplayed by the Katrina survivors." McKinney suggested "many parallels" between rapper Tupac Shakur's death and the "attacks and deaths carried out by the FBI ... against political musicians and activists since the 1950s." Meanwhile, as McKinney held her in-Congress-while-black press conference, someone of true courage stood before 2,000 people in New Orleans. Entertainer/actor/activist Bill Cosby courageously said, "It's painful, but we can't cleanse ourselves unless we look at the wound ... Ladies and gentlemen, you had the highest murder rate, unto each other. You were dealing drugs to each other. You were impregnating our 13-, 12-, 11-year-old children." Will the real so-called black leader please stand up?
Update: McKinney Loses Runoff for Georgia Seat Uh, Ms. McKinney? We'd like our Congressional lapel pin back. You know, that little security checkpoint thingy?
She's a piece of work isn't she? Now she's suing to overturn the election. She only lost by 18 5 points, I can see why she thinks she can win. And how about those body guards from the Black Panthers?