Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson will return to Washington next week after facing security threats linked to her criticism of President Trump’s remarks to the wife of a fallen U.S. soldier.
“Congresswoman Wilson spent this week in the district because of concerns about her safety in the aftermath of the feud that President Trump started with her,” a spokesperson for the Florida Democrat told NBC News.
Wilson missed several votes last week after choosing to remain in Florida for safety reasons. She claimed to have received “a lot of threats,” but declined to go into detail.
“This is a serious matter, and that is the only reason she would ever miss votes,” Wilson’s spokeswoman Joyce Jones said last week, noting that Wilson had been assigned a security detail.
The Florida congresswoman engaged in a bitter battle with Trump and his chief of staff, John Kelly, last week after she released the details of Trump’s condolence call to Myeshia Johnson, a mother of two whose husband Sgt. La David Johnson was killed in Niger.
Wilson said Trump’s comment – that Johnson’s husband “knew what he signed up for” – was insensitive. Trump responded by slamming Wilson in a series of tweets and sending Kelly to address the press corps.
“It is only in these extraordinary circumstances that to her dismay she did not travel to Washington to vote [last week],” Joyce said on Saturday. “We are not going to provide the specifics of what has been said, but the calls have run the gamut from racist and rude to outright menacing.”
