Biden's HUD Pick Vouched for Convicted Wife-Beating Friend Who Later Stabbed the Same Woman in Front of Their Kids
The woman picked to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development once called for judicial mercy upon a man who was convicted of domestic violence against his wife and later went on to stab her to death.
Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge of Ohio has been tapped by presumptive President-elect Joe Biden to serve as HUD secretary. Fudge “understands how to manage challenges and forge solutions at a local level,” Biden said, according to NPR.
In 2015, Fudge wrote a letter on behalf of former Ohio judge and state legislator Lance Mason who had pleaded guilty in a domestic violence case that involved his then-wife Aisha Fraser, according to WKYC-TV.
At the time, Mason had been charged in a 2014 incident in which police accused him of punching his then-wife in the face and biting and choking her as they drove through Cleveland, according to Cleveland.com.
Mason, who attacked his wife in front of their two daughters, punched her 20 times and slammed her head against the vehicle’s dashboard, according to the New York Post.
Fraser needed facial reconstructive surgery after the attack.
However, Fudge stood by Mason at the time.
In her 2015 letter, Fudge said Mason’s actions in the domestic violence incident were “totally out of character” for someone she had known for 20 years.
“Lance accepts full responsibility for his actions and has assured me that something like this will never happen again,” Fudge wrote.
“Lance Mason is a good man who made a very bad mistake.”
Joe Biden’s pick for HUD Secretary is Rep. Marcia Fudge, who wrote this letter in 2015 in support of a judge who beat his wife so bad she needed reconstructive plastic surgery. She called him “a good man who made a bad mistake.”
He stabbed his wife to death three years later. pic.twitter.com/ucWftGteG5
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) December 8, 2020
Mason served nine months in prison after pleading guilty to felonious assault and domestic violence.
Fraser filed for divorce two days after the attack, and later sued her ex-husband in civil court for $150,000, The Washington Post reported.
But in 2018, Mason was charged with killing his former wife while she was dropping off their children for visitation at the home of Mason’s sister. He stabbed Fraser 59 times as their two daughters watched.
At the time, Fudge released a statement about the murder of Fraser.
“My heart breaks for Aisha Fraser. I pray for Aisha’s family, especially her children, as they attempt to deal with this tragedy. My support of Lance in 2015 was based on the person I knew for almost 30 years,” she wrote.
“The person who committed these crimes is not the Lance Mason familiar to me. They were horrific crimes, and I condemn them. I and everyone who knew Aisha are mourning her loss.”
In 2019, Mason was sentenced to life in prison for aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault, violating a protection order and grand theft.
Mason had been a judge with the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. After his jail time for his domestic violence conviction, he worked for the city of Cleveland in a program aimed at helping minority businesses in the city.
William Scandlin, a colleague of Fraser, said Mason did not learn his lesson from his “all-too-brief” prison stint in 2015.
“Within three years he proved to all of the attorneys and clergymen who had vouched for him, that he was in fact the vicious, and selfish person he had showed himself to be when he smashed Aisha’s face into seven pieces,” Scandlin said.
“The proof was fatal for Aisha, and deeply traumatic for her daughters. Please do not let this same mistake play out again.”
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