Washington, DC – A guy from Illinois has pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault after being charged with shaking U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace’s hand in a “exaggerated, aggressive” way.
After a fight at the Rayburn House Office Building on Tuesday night, James McIntyre, 33, of Chicago, was charged. This week, Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, wrote on social media that the incident hurt her wrist and required her to use an arm brace and ice.
McIntyre shook Mace’s hand and said, “Trans youth serve advocacy,” according to Mace. At the time of the event, the Rayburn building was open, and Capitol police said McIntyre had been through a security check.
In the statement at the time, she said she would be “fine as soon as the pain and soreness subside.” However, on Wednesday, she wrote on X that the media was “using the assault on me to prop up misogyny on the Left” and that “Maybe when the Left said ‘believe all women,’ they really meant men who claim to be women.”
“President-elect Donald Trump called to check on me after the event,” she said. New York Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, who is House Minority Leader, told reporters on Wednesday that “no member of Congress should be accosted, assaulted, or attacked because of their political beliefs.” He also said that the incident was “very troubling.”
Last month, Mace got into a big fight over transgender rights when she proposed a bill to change House rules so transgender women can’t use women’s bathrooms or other facilities on Capitol Hill.
Members, officers, and employees of the House would not be able to use single-sex bathrooms in the Capitol or House office buildings that don’t match their “biological sex,” according to Mace’s two-page resolution. However, that proposal came just as the House was getting ready to swear in Rep.-elect Sarah McBride of Delaware as the first openly transgender member of Congress.
After what happened earlier this week, Mace refused to be helped by a doctor. Since then, she’s shared several pictures of herself on social media wearing an arm cast.
After McIntyre was arraigned in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, a deputy judge freed him.
Trying to get in touch with McIntyre’s lawyer wasn’t successful right away.
