Congresswoman threatened with libel suit over comment about Catholic school boys

Roll Call:
Rep. Ilhan Omar is the latest public figure to catch the attention of the attorney for the Covington Catholic students, Robert Barnes, who is threatening to sue just about anyone who he thinks spread “libel” against his clients.

“This is libel. Retract, or get sued,” Barnes tweeted, quoting a now-deleted tweet from the Minnesota Democrat in which she claimed the teens were at fault for the confrontation Saturday at the Indigenous People’s March in Washington, D.C., between the students from the Northern Kentucky school and Native American Nathan Phillips.

“The boys were protesting a woman’s right to choose & yelled ‘it’s not rape if you enjoy it,’” Omar tweeted Tuesday night, before deleting the tweet Wednesday morning. She also erroneously wrote that the students “were taunting 5 Black men before they surrounded Phillips and led racist chants.”

Omar offered no explanation for her deleted tweet.

A spokesman for the congresswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The boys, some of whom wore President Donald Trump’s trademark “Make America Great Again” baseball caps, have said they sought chaperones’ permission to perform school chants to drown out the noise from a group of black “Hebrew Israelites” who were yelling racial epithets and other vulgarities at them.
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The statements attributed to Omar seem inconsistent with the facts.  Was she among those triggered by their MAGA caps?  The lawyer has also threatened to sue media figures for their reporting too unless their stories are retracted.  Since the high school boys are not public figures they do not fall under the media exception to the libel laws.

Omar has also been hostile to Israel and appears to have a bigotry toward non-Muslims.

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