Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, blamed Judge Jeanine Pirro on Sunday, who hosts Fox News’ “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” for death threats against anti-Semitic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who has recently been criticized in New York for the city losing a proposal from Amazon to bring 25,000 new high-paying jobs, linked remarks made by Judge Pirro about hijabs conflicting with the U.S. Constitution, to the criminal case against a New York man who was arrested for threatening to kill Rep. Omar.
“Understand when Jeanine Pirro goes on Fox + rallies people to think hijabs are threatening, it leads to this,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said Saturday evening on Twitter, quoting a tweet from CNN with a link to the story.
“Folks who imply we’re “bad” for politics, the party, the country, etc. have no idea the threats we deal w/ because of that kind of language,” she added. “Talk policy, not personal.”
Last month on her weekly cable news show, “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” Ms. Pirro questioned whether Rep. Omar’s hijab, a Muslim religious garment, is “antithetical to the United States Constitution.”
Fox News Channel suspended Ms. Pirro for two weeks.
Representative Omar has previously come under fire for making anti-Semitic remarks and invoking centuries-old anti-semitic tropes.
She accused Jewish Americans of having a “dual loyalty” to both the U.S. and Israel and said that support for the Jewish state was “all about the benjamins.”
Patrick W. Carlineo, the New York man charged with threatening to kill Rep. Omar, asked one of her staff members if she works “for the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to a criminal complaint released Saturday by federal prosecutors in the Western District of New York.
“Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a (expletive) terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her (expletive) skull,” Mr. Carlineo said during a phone call to Rep. Omar’s office last month.
On Saturday, at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas, President Donald Trump said that Rep. Omar “doesn’t like Israel.”
“Special thanks to Representative Omar of Minnesota,” Mr. Trump said, jokingly. “Oh, I forgot. She doesn’t like Israel. I forgot. I’m so sorry.”
After the phone call, Rep. Omar’s office referred the incident to the U.S. Capitol Police, who coordinated with the FBI in their investigation.
Mr. Carlineo is being detained pending a court hearing on Apr. 10, 2019 at 10:30 a.m. in front of U.S. District Judge Marian W. Payson.
“The fact that a defendant has been charged with a crime is merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty,” the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Western District of New York, said in a statement.
