Rep. Nancy Mace and a chorus of other Republicans called for the man accused of shooting two members of the West Virginia National Guard, killing one of them, to be executed.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan National, was wounded in the shooting when National Guard troops returned fire. He was arrested at the scene and is being treated in a D.C.-area hospital.
On Friday morning, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Lakanwal will face a charge of first-degree murder over the death of West Virginia service member Sarah Beckstrom, 20. Pirro had announced a day earlier that the Department of Justice would charge him with assault with intent to kill while armed and three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
The other National Guardsmen wounded in the shooting, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition.
Lakanwal came to the United States in 2021 during Operation Allies Welcome, which occurred after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Lakanwal was a “member of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended shortly following the chaotic evacuation.”
Mace appeared on Fox News on Thanksgiving day to respond to a report from Fox’s chief national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin, saying that the inspector general’s office found there were no systemic vetting failures for people leaving Afghanistan.
But the South Carolina Republican said the House Oversight Committee and Armed Services Committee had heard otherwise.
“I believe that the vetting was very loose,” she told anchor Kevin Corke. “We know on our southern border during the Biden administration, we had a number – hundreds – of potential terrorists that came across the southern border into the United States. We know that there are terrorist cells all across the country waiting to act.”
In addition, she called for the execution of the suspect and said she hoped the Department of Justice would push for the death penalty.
“I hope that the DOJ and the judge in this case will put this terrorist down,” she said. “He doesn’t deserve to live.”
Mace is currently running for governor of her home state and has undergone a transformation from a Republican who occasionally criticized President Donald Trump and worked with Democrats to a hardline MAGA Republican.
Most recently, she joined Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado to co-sign a discharge petition by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to release files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Mace is not the only Republican calling for execution.
“I agree with the district attorney, we should be pressing the ultimate charges, the death penalty for someone who has attacked our National Guard on the streets of Washington, DC,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told Fox & Friends.
Beckstrom and Wolfe were in Washington as part of Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to the nation’s capital as a means to clamp down on crime.
The shooting happened around 2:15 pm on Wednesday around the Farragut West Metro Station near Lafayette Square, a few blocks away from the White House.
