The District’s former attorney general lashed out at D.C. Councilman Marion Barry on Monday, calling Barry unfit to serve after the councilman’s statement about immigrant nurses in the District.
Peter Nickles, who served under the previous mayoral administration, also admonished the D.C. Council for not condemning their colleague.
“If the city’s mission is self-governance, then it has to show some leadership when people like [former councilman] Harry Thomas Jr. and Marion Barry show that they’re not serving the city faithfully,” Nickles told The Washington Examiner. “We’re the nation’s capital — how do we let a guy repeatedly get away with these transgressions?”
In response, Barry said Nickles was “continuing his character assassination of me and his personal vendetta against me” and that he should “just stop it.”
“Thank God no one on the council is listening to him,” Barry said in a statement. “This is a democracy. When the people elect you to an office, only the people can take you out.”
Nickles’ comments first came on NewsTalk 8, where he said Barry “should be brought to the dock and his fellow council members and the mayor should judge him” for comments Barry made during a council hearing last week.
The former mayor said “a number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines,” work in D.C. hospitals and “no offense, but let’s grow our own … so that we don’t have to go scrounging in our community clinics. …”
Earlier in April, Barry was quoted during his primary election victory party complaining about “dirty” convenience stores operated by Asians in his home district, Ward 8. Following the first comment, Mayor Vincent Gray, Council Chairman Kwame Brown and other elected leaders issued statements condemning the statement.
No one publicly condemned Barry, although Brown did send his colleague a letter telling him the comments were unacceptable. Following Nickles’ on-air scolding Monday, Brown refused to answer an Examiner reporter when questioned about it during a news conference. Other council offices declined to comment on Nickles’ attack.
“You have to consider the source,” said a former city official, who asked to remain anonymous because of his relationship with Nickles and Barry. “[Nickles] never got along with anyone on council, really. He managed to insult [almost] every one of them before he was done in four years.”
Examiner Staff Writer Alan Blinder contributed to this report.
