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.”
All his picks are former Obama staff because Obama is calling the shots not Joe Biden.