Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is praising Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for questioning Elliott Abrams about the Iran-Contra affair and Central American killings during the Reagan administration, saying that watching her question him “feels like justice.”
“@IlhanMN is a Somali refugee. She has felt the ravages of war,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Wednesday. “Watching her question Trump’s envoy to VZ, who pled guilty to several Iran-Contra crimes, feels like justice.”
{mosads}Omar earlier Wednesday asked Abrams, who serves as President Trump’s special envoy to Venezuela, about his role in the Regan administration’s foreign policy during a heated exchange in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing.
“I don’t understand why members of this committee or the American people should find any testimony that you give today to be truthful,” she said in her initial comments to Abrams, who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress in the Iran-Contra investigation.
She also asked how he felt about the Salvadoran army’s massacre of hundreds of civilians at a time when the U.S. backed El Salvador’s military.
“You later said that the U.S. policy in El Salvador was a fabulous achievement. Do you still think so?” she asked.
“That is a ridiculous question,” Abrams responded. “I am not going to respond to that kind of personal attack, which is not a question.”
“I am not going to respond to that question,” he said later. “I’m sorry. I don’t think this entire line of questioning is meant to be real questions, and so I will not reply.”
Abrams was named special envoy in January after Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself president after a disputed election. The Trump administration recognized Guaidó’s presidency.
Omar herself has been the subject of controversy in recent days after she tweeted that American politicians’ support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” She apologized for the tweet, which she said referred to the powerful Israel lobby, but others said it invoked anti-Semitic tropes.
Several prominent Republicans have called for her to resign from the Foreign Affairs Committee.