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Rep. Summer Lee listed as speaker at Code Pink inaugural ball, but says she didn’t attend

The event featured a lineup of far-left anti-Israel activists, including Linda Sarsour, Mehdi Hasan and Max Blumenthal

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., attends the House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing titled "Overdue Oversight of the Capital City: Part II," in Rayburn Building on Tuesday, May 16, 2023.

Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) was listed as a speaker at an inaugural ball in Washington on Saturday presented by Code Pink, a radical anti-Israel group that has gained notoriety for disruptions on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

But a spokesperson for Lee’s office claimed to Jewish Insider on Monday that she “did not attend the event,” even as the congresswoman was publicly promoted as one of several confirmed speakers just a day before the ball.

The spokesperson did not respond to a request for clarification about her scheduled involvement in the event called the “Peace Ball: Voices of Justice and Liberation,” held on Saturday night at the Mead Center for American Theater in Washington.

In addition to Lee, a flier for the event listed Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) as speakers. Their offices did not respond to requests for comment from JI regarding their attendance at the event. 

The ball featured several speakers who have drawn scrutiny for invoking antisemitic rhetoric, including Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, novelist Alice Walker, Rutgers Professor Noura Erakat, left-wing pundit Mehdi Hasan and conspiracy theorist Max Blumenthal, according to the flier.

The ball had also announced former Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO) as among the speakers. Bush, for her part, gave remarks at the event, according to social media footage viewed by JI.

Full footage of the ball was not available to press because it was a private event, a spokesperson for Code Pink told JI. The spokesperson was unable to confirm why Lee was listed as a speaker, saying that the planning was organized by Busboys and Poets, a restaurant in Washington that co-sponsored the annual ball.

The restaurant as well as its owner did not respond to requests for comment from JI on Monday.

Code Pink, a far-left anti-war group founded in 2002, has frequently stirred controversy over its raucous interruptions on Capitol Hill — including a recent Senate confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, where group members called him a misogynist and a Christian Zionist as he delivered his opening statement.

The group, which supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, has been  heavily involved in anti-Israel protests, targeting the Jewish CNN journalist Dana Bash at a synagogue in Philadelphia as well as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) at her home in San Francisco — where last March one of its activists was arrested for vandalism and faced felony charges.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has accused the group of stoking antisemitism for blaming the Los Angeles wildfires on Israel. 

“The nature of antisemitism is to scapegoat the Jewish People and the Jewish State for everything wrong in the world — no matter how tenuous the causal connection,” he said on X. “Toward that end, the antisemites of Code Pink are blaming the Jewish State for the wildfires in California.”

The group has also drawn criticism for aggressively pushing Chinese propaganda.

Lee, an outspoken critic of Israel, has previously faced scrutiny for agreeing to speak last February at a fundraising banquet for a Muslim advocacy group alongside several guests who have made antisemitic and homophobic remarks.

The congresswoman later reversed course and announced she had cancelled her appearance at the event hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose executive director has said he was “happy to see” Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks and argued that Israel does not have a “right to self-defense.”

On Sunday morning, Lee replied to a constituent in her Pittsburgh district who had raised questions on social media about her advertised participation in the Code Pink event over the weekend.

“I’m sure all the inaugural balls are a nice time. I’m in Pittsburgh,” she said in her response posted to X. “Are you so concerned with the personal time and movements of any other adults who you don’t know or this unhealthy obsession just reserved for me?”

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