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Democratic Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, a frontrunner for a position in President-elect Joe Biden's cabinet, vouched for a man accused of domestic abuse, who then went on to murder his ex-wife after he got out of prison.
Fudge is making her case to be Biden's secretary of agriculture, she told Politico on Wednesday, emphasizing her loyalty to Biden. The Sunrise Movement, a far-left activist group, also included Fudge on a list of approved potential cabinet nominations.
But a potential Fudge nomination could be hampered by the fact that she pleaded for leniency on behalf of former Ohio state legislator Lance Mason in 2015 after he was charged with beating his then-wife, Aisha Fraser.
Mason served nine months in jail before murdering his ex-wife in 2018. He was sentenced to life in prison in Sept. 2019 after pleading guilty to Fraser's murder.
"Lance accepts full responsibility for his actions and has assured me that something like this will never happen again," Fudge wrote in a letter to the judge. "Lance Mason is a good man who made a very bad mistake. I can only hope that you can see in Lance what I and others see," she added.
At the time that Fudge wrote the letter, Mason was accused of violently beating his wife in front of their two children, according to Politico, which reported the story in Oct. 2018 after Mason's arrest.
"My support of Lance in 2015 was based on the person I knew for almost 30 years — an accomplished lawyer, prosecutor, state legislator and judge. That’s the Lance Mason I supported," Fudge said in a statement released to Politico after Mason's 2018 arrest. "The person who committed these crimes is not the Lance Mason familiar to me. They were horrific crimes, and I condemn them."
Neither Fudge's office nor Biden's transition team immediately returned emails from Fox News seeking comment for this story.
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