Maxine Waters cancels events over ‘very serious death threat’

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has canceled a pair of public events after she received a “very serious death threat,” CNN reported Thursday.

The congresswoman said in a statement that she had seen an increase in threats after she called for protestors to publicly confront Trump administration officials.

{mosads}”As the President has continued to lie and falsely claim that I encouraged people to assault his supporters, while also offering a veiled threat that I should ‘be careful’, even more individuals are leaving (threatening) messages and sending hostile mail to my office,” Waters said in the statement, according to CNN.

She said there was “one very serious death threat” made against her on Monday from a person in Texas, “which is why my planned speaking engagements in Texas and Alabama were cancelled this weekend.”

“This is just one in several very serious threats the United States Capitol Police are investigating in which individuals threatened to shoot, lynch, or cause me serious bodily harm,” Waters said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Capitol Police told The Hill that it does not comment on ongoing investigations.

President Trump publicly criticized Waters during campaign rallies this week, and inaccurately claimed in a tweet on Monday that Waters called for harm to his supporters.

The Democrat said that she did not call for harm to Trump’s supporters or officials and that she believes in “peaceful protest.”

“For these members of his Cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store, the people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No I can’t hang with you, this is wrong, this is unconscionable, and we can’t keep doing this to children,’ ” Waters said on Saturday.

Top lawmakers from both parties criticized Waters’s comments, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Waters called for the public confrontations after two Trump officials were confronted in public places. Protestors targeted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during her dinner at a Washington, D.C., restaurant, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant.

Those incidents took place as the Trump administration faced backlash over the since-ended policy separating undocumented immigrant families at the border.