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President Joe Biden’s most recent appointee for the position of Massachusetts US attorney, who was narrowly confirmed with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote, was caught on video in a racist tirade.
Suffolk Country District Attorney Rachael Rollins, who now leads the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts, was seen in a resurfaced video going off on a reporter and making comments about a “white woman,” The Daily Mail reported.
On Wednesday she made history as the first black woman to be confirmed in the role by the Senate when Vice President Harris broke a 50-50 tie along party lines.
But in footage recorded by Boston 25 News 11 months prior, Rollins angrily threatens a news team with legal action, accuses them of endangering her children for asking for an interview near her home, and brings up the race of the other driver involved in the Boston parking lot dustup.
In a series of tweets following her foul-mouthed exchange with the news crew, Rollins claimed that she had been accosted by a ‘masked white man’ who jumped out of his truck and removed something ‘large & dark’ from the trunk, leaving her and her children feeling ‘terrified,’ she wrote.
Rollins has a history of making public statements invoking race, railing against police brutality, and expressing support for Black Lives Matter protesters.
A Boston 25 reporter was attempting to confront Rollins regarding an incident on which it was alleged that she angrily confronted a woman outside of a shopping center, but Rollins was furious.
“So as a Black woman, in this moment in this country, you’re going to put my f—ing house on screen?” she said to the reporter, but Rollins house was never shown.
“No, no, no, ma’am, we’re just here approaching you to ask you a question,” the reporter said.
“Get away from my family. Speak to me at my job. If I get hurt or harmed because of this, you are on the record for that, or my kids are f—ing killed,” the DA said to the reporter. “Who do you think you are? This is private property. Get out of here!”
“And you know what I’ll do? I’ll call the police and make an allegation. And we’ll see how that works with you,” she said.
Then she went off on the race of the woman before threatening the reporter again.
“So the rantings of a White woman get you here and scare my children?” she said. “Get off our private property, and I swear to God, I’m dead serious. I will find your name.”
Meet the new US attorney for Massachusetts @DARollins pic.twitter.com/3pboCuBklr
— Mike Saccone (@mikesacconetv) December 8, 2021
In the past Rollins has expressed support for Black Lives Matter and made other controversial comments on race.
In February 2020, during a panel discussion with other federal prosecutors, t McGregor Scott, and white man who was then US Attorney for the Eastern District of California, criticized criminal justice reforms and mentioned the increase in homicide rates in Baltimore City and Philadelphia.
Rollins snapped at Scott, saying, “I will say, as one of less than 1 per cent of actual people with melanin that are in this role… I really don’t have much time for more White men telling me what communities of color need.”
Then last June, during the George Floyd protests, she spoke at Boston City Hall an accused police of murdering black people.
“As your elected district attorney, we have looked around this country and seen police officers — people that black lives pay taxes to fund these positions — shoot us in the street as if we were animals,” she said.
“People are disgusted and outraged, and they should be. And it is completely ironic to have to say to you, ‘Please don’t be violent. Please keep your voice down. Please be silent and comply with all of the police’s requirements,’” when in fact it’s those very people that murder us with impunity. But that’s where we are right now,” she said.
A day before that she said something similar on Twitter.
“Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Tony McDade. Christian Cooper,’ Rollins stated, invoking the names of black people who were killed around the US during confrontations with police or white civilians. ‘While we are being murdered at will by the police & their proxy, privileged racists like Amy Cooper play the victim,” she said. “No more apologies. No more words. Demand action. Radical change now. Nothing less.”
