A story about a sex trafficking victim shared by Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) in her bizarre State of the Union rebuttal is coming under fire for the dishonest way it was used to attack President Joe Biden’s border policies.
In a seven-minute TikTok video, former Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz explained how his lingering questions over the anecdote led him to the conclusion that Britt had “lied about something really horrific and really important.”
The actual content of the story is heart-wrenching. As Britt told it, she traveled to Texas just after taking office last year and “spoke to a woman who shared her story with me.”
“She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12,” Britt said, going on to outline horrific acts of sexual violence that the woman said she endured as a child.
“We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a third-world country,” Britt said with dramatic flair. “This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace. This crisis is despicable.”
There are a few problems with Britt’s framing of the story, though.
Britt did not name the abuse survivor in her State of the Union rebuttal directly, but Britt’s communications director, Sean Ross, confirmed to The Washington Post that the story was about an activist named Karla Jacinto Romero, as Katz had suggested.
While Britt made it seem like an example of recent lawlessness caused by Biden-era policies, the abuse Romero endured happened two decades ago, when George W. Bush was president. That fact alone has led many people on social media to ask how Biden can be to blame.
As he explained in his now-viral video, Katz unearthed a press release from Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s (R-Tenn.) office dated Jan. 11, 2023 — shortly after Britt was sworn in — describing a trip to Texas. Blackburn, Britt and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) traveled to the…
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