[FoxNews] Ranking member slammed 'partisan hearing' before mothers testified about their children's murders at hands of illegals.Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., is under fire after he appeared to close his eyes and lower his head during congressional testimony on the impacts of migrant crime on victims' families Tuesday – prompting criticism that leading Democrats are not taking the issue seriously and have disrespected those in mourning.
Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Dan Bishop, R-N.C., skewered the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee after the incident had people in the audience fuming.
The photo, with a box of tissues in the foreground, also shows an aide next to Nadler, looking at his cellphone as mothers who lost their daughters to suspected foreign rapists and killers shared their traumatic stories of loss with the committee.
"One of the ladies that came with me, she took a picture of the Democrats on the other side as we were speaking and telling our stories, us, the mothers, mothers crying, telling our stories – and one of them is sleeping, and the other one's on his phone," said Patty Morin, whose daughter Rachel was brutally raped and murdered after police say an illegal immigrant attacked her on a jogging trail near her home in Maryland.
Cathie Groenewold, a church friend of Morin's who took the photo, said she found Nadler's demeanor deeply offensive.
"I was astounded at the careless attitude of Jerry Nadler and… the man sitting to his right," she told Fox News Digital. "They are pouring out their hearts, these women, who have lost their children to fentanyl and the most gruesome murders you could imagine, and they don’t have the common decency to sit up and give them their undivided attention."
Nadler and other Democrats appeared to treat the hearing as a partisan "stunt," she said.
"I'm sorry, but these women are drawing attention to a serious issue," she said. "It's not a stunt, and they weren't coerced into coming."
Morin's 37-year-old daughter was a mother of five and small business owner. Her alleged killer is a 23-year-old from El Salvador named Victor Antonio Martinez-Hernandez, who is also suspected of killing another woman in his home country and sexually assaulting a woman and her 9-year-old daughter in a Los Angeles home invasion.
At the start of the hearing, the longtime New York congressman began by sharing his condolences with the witnesses.
"I cannot imagine how difficult this loss has been for you," he said.
Then he pivoted to calling the proceedings "one more partisan hearing designed to divide us and to score political points before an election."
Among the eight witnesses, four lost their children in connection with the border crisis.
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