Maxine Waters’ “scumbag” comment has revealed her 1998 plea to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro to keep an FBI Most Wanted terrorist safe from extradition back to the U.S.

Waters, a Democratic congresswoman serving for California, was recently caught on the hot mic calling President Donald Trump and his cabinet “scumbags,” launching her into the spotlight and sparking backlash from Trump supporting social media users. One such user, John Cardillo, who also happens to be a journalist who works for Fox Business, tweeted a copy of a letter written by Waters back in 1998.

.@MaxineWaters helped an escaped cop killer on the @FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List evade prosecution with this letter: pic.twitter.com/GJpTPCVRXu — John Cardillo (@johncardillo) February 22, 2017

The letter was addressed to the now deceased Cuban leader Fidel Castro and it was in relation to a recent vote, the House Concurrent Resolution 254, involving the Congressional Black Caucus.

Those who voted “yes” to the resolution were voting in favor of extraditing wanted U.S. criminals who had escaped charges and prosecution by relocating to Cuba back to America. A woman named “Joanne Chesimard” had been listed as part of those extradited, but when Maxine Waters and other Democrats voted in favor of the resolution, they knew Chesimard by a different name; Assata Shakur, a cop-killing felon who’d sought asylum in Cuba to avoid serving her sentence.

Joanna Deborah Chesimard, A.K.A. Assata Shakur, FBI Most Wanted Terrorist poster of 2013. [Image by Julio Cortez/AP Images]

Waters didn’t refer to Shakur as a murderer or even a criminal in her letter to Castro, however. Instead, she wrote that Assata was a “political activist” who’d escaped the U.S. clutches of “political persecution.”

Put simply, Maxine Waters did not think Assata Shakur was a scumbag, even though she killed a cop and was (and still is) on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

According to the FBI’s Most Wanted website, Shakur, or Joanne Deborah Chesimard, is wanted for “murder, act of terrorism, domestic terrorism and unlawful flight to avoid confinement.”

The crime that got Assata in trouble happened on May 2, 1973. She was riding in a car with two other people when they were pulled over by police on the New Jersey Turnpike. Shakur had to know that if the cops found out who she was she’d be arrested, as she had multiple active warrants. For that reason, or just because they could, she and her two companions launched a shootout with the officers. One of the cops and one of the perpetrators died on the scene. She and the friend who’d survived tried to escape and evaded capture for a short time before they were found and taken into custody.

Four years later, Assata Shakur was convicted of first degree murder in addition to various other violent crimes by a jury of her peers and delivered a life sentence. That should have been the last anyone ever heard of this woman, but a couple years later, Shakur broke free from confinement and managed to survive by keeping a low profile until leaving U.S. soil for Cuba in 1984. The reward for information that would lead to Assata’s successful capture is currently at $1 million.

Assata Shakur's victim, Officer Werner Foerster. [Image by Tim Larsen/AP Images]

Maxine Waters, before she knew House Resolution 254 could negatively affect the life of Assata Shakur, voted in favor of the bill, which was also in favor of extradition, as she points out in the letter to Castro. Yet also in her letter, she says she opposes the legislation because she believes in the rights of nations to grant political asylum to citizens of other countries.

If Maxine believes in those rights, then why did she vote in favor of extradition in the first place?

Simple. She was lying. For whatever reason, Waters was bothered by the possibility that a convicted cop-killer and domestic terrorist could one day face the justice she deserved.

The plea to Castro continues with the California politician proceeding to defend Assata Shakur, writing that the convict “has maintained that she was persecuted as a result of her political beliefs and political affiliations.”

Waters writes about the civil rights era of the 60’s and 70’s in an attempt to justify Shakur’s illicit activities. Maxine said that groups who promoted the message of “Black Power” were discriminately sought out by law enforcement for no other reason than because of their political outlooks.

That may be true, but if it is, it was the political outlooks of these groups that caused them to wreak havoc, so it makes sense they would be targeted for that reason.

According to Waters, the Black Panther Party, an organization which headed the Black Liberation Movement (also called Black Liberation Army) were victims of “vicious and reprehensible acts” by police and the government, failing to mention, of course, the terror caused by these very groups.

According to the FBI Vault, the Black Panther Party promoted “the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government.”

The Nation reports that left-wing extremism in the late 1960s and 1970s, by not just the Black Panters and the Black Liberation Army, but also by groups such as Weather Underground, is an ugly part of American history barely touched on nowadays. These groups shared many ideas of what should be done in the name of social justice and relied on violence (especially Weather Underground) and murder to send their messages. Government and the FBI many times resorted to breaking the law themselves to handle the chaos brought on by these domestic terror groups.

Maxine has the nerve to call those who disagree with her scumbags. I don’t know about you, but based on what I know about Maxine Waters, I’d be proud to be called a scumbag by her.

Why did Maxine Waters want to protect a violent criminal who had been found guilty of killing an innocent police officer? Why was it important to Waters that a terrorist on the FBI Most Wanted list avoid capture? She can call the Trump administration scumbags all she wants. This is, after all, a free country, but she was the one who petitioned a dictator for the continued protection of a vicious killer.

[Featured Image by Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images]