Says Thomas: “Today I’m here to be very clear about what happened Friday: I want to make sure that everyone knows I’m not backtracking on my statement or retracting anything I said.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/kuuAxa45Qq
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) July 22, 2019
A 30 second fight at the checkout isn’t harassment. But claiming someone is a racist before national media and making up a false statement is defamation.
Georgia state Rep. Erica Thomas said she wants police to charge the man who she claims told her to “go back to where you came from.”
Thomas told WSB-TV about her demand that Eric Sparkes be charged after a press conference in which she said she was “not backtracking” her initial claim.
The Georgia Democrat originally claimed Friday that Sparkes had confronted her in a Publix grocery store checkout line and told her to “go back to where you came from.”
Thomas appeared initially to backtrack the claim on Saturday, saying in an interview: “I don’t know if he said ‘go back,’ or those types of words … I don’t know if he said ‘go back to your country’ or ‘go back to where you came from,’ but he was making those types of references is what I remember.”
“So you don’t remember exactly what he said?” a reporter asked Thomas.
“No, no, definitely not. But I know it was ‘go back’ because I know I told him to ‘go back,'” the lawmaker responded.