LaMonica McIver: Alina Habba Wanted Me to Admit Things I Never Did... I Can’t Remember Exactly What it Was

PSAKI: “You were charged by Alina Habba. I just gave a little bit of an overview there. She has quite a history. Do you think you would have been charged if it had been any other U.S. attorney in this — in this role?”
McIVER: “I mean, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s — I don’t want to speculate. I mean, I think anyone that Trump, you know, promotes or appoints, I mean, I think they’ve been problematic from every department you can think of. So I wouldn’t say it wouldn’t happen, but I just — it’s crazy because there’s so many other crimes and things to be focused on and definitely not to be focused on a congresswoman or Congress members who were there just to do an oversight visit. We were not there to bust detainees out of prison. We’ve heard that come out from the DoJ. We were there for an oversight visit. And, Jen, this is something that we’ve done before. We were just a couple of weeks ago, back in February, we were at a same kind of detention center in Elizabeth, a couple of miles away, and we went there, different, you know, providers, third-party provider, but we were there, had a visit. There was a little delay, but we still were able to go in and do our visit. We didn’t have a whole, you know, ICE unit come and create a chaos situation for us to take a visit. This is something that we’re used to doing. We’ve done it before. And so we had no idea that it would spiral out of this. So I just think there are so many other important things for Alina to be focused on, that she should be focused on, rather than trying to stop, you know, Congress members from doing their jobs.”
PSAKI: “No question about it. Lots happening in every state. You said this morning that — well, Habba said you had declined every opportunity to come to a resolution. You said they wanted you to admit to something you didn’t do. What did they want you to admit to?”
McIVER: “I mean, there was a lot. We’ve had a week of back and forth with them, and I will say that I did not waver. You know, I showed up there to do my job, and she wanted me to admit to doing things, all of these different list of things that she said that I did.”
PSAKI: “Like what?”
McIVER: “I mean, from things of impeding, you know, there were some other things in there that she put in there, but I can’t remember exactly what it was. But she wanted me to admit to these things, sign an agreement to them. And I’m not doing that, you know, because it’s not true. There was a lot of back and forth and just tenseness, you know, all week from her and from her office. And so at the end of the day, once again, showed up to do my job. And I don’t need to apologize for doing that. That is what the people of New Jersey expect for me to do, the 744,000, almost close to 800,000 people I represent. And why should we apologize about doing our job when ICE and Homeland Security created that environment and that atmosphere that we saw out there that day?”