Do the legal protections for members of Congress hold even if they’re charged with assaulting a federal officer? That’s the question three federal judges considered Wednesday for nearly two hours in the case against Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver.
One of the first questions asked by the panel of judges in Wilmington, Delaware, was whether a member of Congress, during their legislative duties, would be protected if he “comes across a teenage girl and gropes her.”
“Isn’t this as weak a case as I hypothesized?” Judge Stephanos Bibas, who President Donald Trump nominated in his first administration, asked McIver’s attorney during Wednesday’s hearing.
In 2025, McIver was charged with assaulting an officer during her visit to an immigration detention facility in New Jersey when officers began to arrest Newark Mayor Ras Baraka outside the facility — an arrest that officials quickly dropped.
Prosecutors allege that McIver slammed her forearm into one officer and tried to restrain another by grabbing him as well as using her forearms to push against an officer when she was trying to get back into the facility.
