Rep. Nancy Mace’s former communications director isn’t buying Mace’s claims that she was attacked by a trans activist. On Tuesday night, Mace wrote that she was “physically accosted tonight on Capitol grounds over my fight to protect women.”

According to reports, James McIntyre, cofounder of the Illinois chapter of Foster Care Alumni of America, was arrested and charged with assaulting a government official after an event at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Tuesday night. Witnesses have said that what they saw does not match Mace’s claims.

Mace posted a picture of herself wearing a sling, writing on X “Just sitting here with your run-of-the-mill gentle ‘normal handshake,’” an apparent reference to the claim that she was assaulted. 

Natalie Johnson, who served as former communications director for Mace during her first year in Congress, responded to Mace’s tweet. “This is the same woman who told staff, myself included, during Jan. 6 that she wanted to get ‘punched in the face’ by a rioter so she could get on TV,” Johnson wrote. “She’s full of shit and her prop of a sling is a pathetic ploy for attention.”

According to the Washington Post, Elliot Hinkle, a foster-care advocate from Wyoming, witnessed the interaction between Mace and McIntyre.

“What we witnessed was a handshake, a passionate shake, but it didn’t look like an assault or intended aggression,” Hinkle said, referencing several people they said also saw the encounter. They said McIntyre told Mace, “Trans youth are also foster youth, and they need your support.”

Johnson has been critical of her former boss in the past. Recently, the former staffer slammed Mace after the lawmaker promoted a bill, disingenuously called “Protecting Women’s Private Spaces Act,” that bans trans women from using single-sex federally owned bathrooms. The move was a direct attack at Delaware's newly elected Rep. Sarah McBride. McBride is the first openly transgender member of Congress.

“Tweeting 262 times about a bill that applies to like .00000001% of Congress in 36 hours is definitely about protecting women. It's certainly not just a ploy for media attention,” Johnson wrote on X. "If you think this bill is about protecting women and not simply a ploy to get on Fox News, you've been fooled,” Johnson added.

Since joining Congress in 2021, Mace's affinity for Matt Gaetz-style stunts has grown. She even joined Gaetz, whom she had previously described as a “political D-lister” and a “fraud,” in ousting former GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In 2023, former staffers revealed that the South Carolina congresswoman had increasingly become obsessed with seeking media attention.

McIntyre was held overnight in a D.C. jail complex and allowed to return to his home in Chicago under conditions he stay at least 100 feet away from Mace, and he is also banned from entering D.C. The latter condition was objected to by his attorney.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.