Star Tribune
U.S. Rep. Angie Craig details trauma, fallout from physical attack at her D.C. home
U.S. Rep. Angie Craig said Tuesday in a written victim impact statement that she was physically hurt but also traumatized, shaken and forced to move after a February attack in the elevator of her Washington, D.C., apartment building.
“While my physical recovery was days, my mental and emotional recovery has taken much longer and is ongoing,” she wrote. “My sense of safety and security has been significantly impacted.”
Craig detailed how the assault by a stranger impacted her life in a single-page statement filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where her attacker will be sentenced Thursday by Chief Judge James Boasberg. Kendrid Khalil Hamlin pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of assaulting a member of Congress and two counts of assaulting law enforcement.
Federal prosecutors have asked for a sentence of more than three years in prison and three years on supervised release.
In requesting the sentence, prosecutors cited Hamlin’s history of violent conduct, including at least nine prior arrests for violence or threats that were dismissed as part of plea agreements. “The defendant’s actions have also shown that he is unwilling to abide by conditions of release, justifying the need for a significant sentence to incarceration to promote respect for the law,” prosecutors wrote.
The government also submitted Craig’s signed statement in which she said the case had received attention because she’s a member of Congress but on that morning she was “simply a woman followed into an elevator by a man and assaulted there.” There’s no evidence the attack was politically motivated.
Hamlin trapped her, grabbed her neck, slammed her into the steel wall and punched her in the face, Craig wrote. She suffered bruises, a cut to her lip and “several days of soreness and discomfort,” Craig wrote.
Since the attack she has sought professional help for anxiety. She also has taken self-defense training, she wrote.
Her family also has been impacted, she wrote, with her wife and four sons concerned about her safety — “both generally — and specifically due to the attention to public safety my assault” received in the media.
Craig said one media outlet disclosed the address of her apartment, forcing her to break her lease and move because of security concerns. “Following comments by media personalities about my assault, I received a flurry of additional targeted physical violence and death threats to myself and my staff,” she wrote.
The third-term Democrat’s office previously released information about political “hit jobs” on her by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and Fox News in the aftermath of the attack.
The NRCC issued a “Defund Angie” news release in February and linked to a Fox News story headlined “Democratic lawmaker with ties to ‘defund the police’ movement calls for crackdown on crime following assault.”
Craig represents Minnesota’s Second District, a swing district including southern Twin Cities suburbs.
In her written statement, Craig said that in sentencing Hamlin, she hopes the court takes into account the significant consequences of his actions.
She also said she hopes that Hamlin receives mental health and addiction services to allow him to become a productive member of society. “Until that occurs, given his history of previous convictions and my own experience, I believe he would continue to be a further threat to others,” she wrote.
Hamlin did not live in Craig’s apartment building, but he was able to enter the lobby of the building at 6 a.m. where he defecated and paced around until Craig showed up about an hour later to get coffee. He followed her into the elevator and attacked her. She was able to escape after she threw her hot coffee on him.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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