Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), former Vice President Joe Biden’s pick to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has faced scrutiny for supporting a man who beat his wife and eventually killed her.
Media outlets covered the controversy, including Roll Call and Breitbart News.
Roll Call reported on Mary Ann Lorient, who confronted Fudge outside a venue in a Cleveland, Ohio, suburb and filmed the confrontation in which she called the congresswoman a “murderer”:
Lorient accused her of having “blood on her hands” for the death of sixth-grade teacher Aisha M. Fraser, who was fatally stabbed in November, Cleveland.com reported. Her estranged husband Lance Mason has been charged with aggravated murder, among other charges.
Mason had been accused of brutal violence against his wife before. In 2014, Mason pleaded guilty to choking and punching Fraser in front of their two children, Fox 8 reported. Police charged Mason, then a judge and a former state representative, with attempted felonious assault.
Fudge wrote a letter to the court in 2015 requesting leniency in the case, praising Mason as a close friend and “a good man who made a very bad mistake.” Fudge has since renounced those words. In a statement after Fraser’s death, Fudge said “the person who committed these crimes is not the Lance Mason familiar to me.”
“We’re going to unseat you. You’re evil,” Lorient said to Fudge in the video. “As a black woman, to write that letter? At what point did you have empathy for her? At what point did you think about her? At what point?”
“The existence of the video was reported by Cleveland.com following the hearing in which Fudge successfully sought a protection order against Lorient, whom she accuses of having followed her at several events,” Roll Call reported. “Lorient denies that accusation, and said she has only met the congresswoman once — at the January banquet.”
Breitbart News reported in 2019 on the domestic violence controversy and how it ended Fudge’s futile effort to unseat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA):
House Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi crushed an intra-Democrat revolt against her bid to retake the Speaker’s gavel next year led by Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH) after a 2015 letter from Fudge backing a disgraced former Cleveland judge who was convicted of brutally beating his wife resurfaced in the wake of the man’s alleged murder of her.
Fudge, who had floated potentially running against Pelosi for Speaker and was pushed by anti-Pelosi rebel Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA), had attacked Pelosi as an “elitist” and “very wealthy person” out of touch with ordinary Democrats in the wake of the midterm election where Democrats retook the majority in the House. She had also signed a letter along with more than a dozen other Democrats pledging to vote against Pelosi on the floor of the House of Representatives in January.
But then, as Breitbart News reported earlier on Tuesday, a letter from 2015 surfaced where Fudge backed former Judge Lance Mason who was convicted of a 2014 assault on his wife. He was convicted of hitting his wife 20 times, and then smashing her head into the dashboard of their car while their children watched from the backseat. Fudge’s letter backing his character, sent to the prosecutor in Cuyahoga County, said Mason’s behavior toward his wife Aisha Fraser during that assault “is out of character and totally contrary to everything I know about him.” Fudge went on to write that Mason “accepts full responsibility for his actions and has assured me that something like this will never happen again.”
After spending nine months in prison for his domestic violence crime, he got a job working in the mayor’s office in Cleveland. Not long after, he stabbed his wife to death and was eventually charged with her murder; Mason pleaded guilty in 2019.
“In the wake of this development — and with Pelosi throwing her a plum subcommittee chairmanship next year —Fudge has dropped all opposition to Pelosi and endorsed Pelosi’s bid for the Speakership of the House, effectively ending the rebellion against her,” Breitbart News reported.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.