Watch: New Chattanooga DA may prosecute librarians for contributing to the delinquency of minors
The new District Attorney in Tennessee's fourth largest city said she would consider prosecuting librarians, teachers, and school administrators over books that some parents may find objectionable as the GOP's culture wars continue to escalate.
A newly resurfaced video, purportedly from a March 22 campaign event, shows Coty Wamp being asked about the books in Tennessee public schools.
The questioner says the far-right group Moms for Liberty has "really exposed a lot of the obscenity and vulgar language — just all kinds of awful stuff — in the books that are in our Hamilton County school libraries and classrooms, on shelves in the classrooms."
"Do you feel like there should be some kind of prosecution for these librarians?" the person asked.
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Wamp, who at the time was the general counsel for the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office, said she had brought Moms for Liberty in to meet with the sheriff on the issue.
"I think that there's going to come a time in some of these books where it crosses a criminal line, it's called contributing to the delinquency of a minor," Wamp said.
As she was speaking, she was flipping through a book.
"Yeah, I don't know how it's not contributing to the delinquency of a minor," Wamp concluded.
She explained that as "somebody who has prosecuted these cases," she was focused on who allowed the books Moms for Liberty was seeking to ban.
"Is it the librarian?" she asked. "Is it the school administrators? Is the school board?"
"The bottom line is this, the school board needs to remove them from the schools," Wamp said. "The county mayor can have influence over that, but the county mayor still cannot dictate what the schools can do."
The incoming in county mayor is Weston Wamp, Coty's brother. The two are the children of former U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN).
UPDATE: Following publication, Coti Wamp told Jezebel, “I won’t prosecute librarians or teachers for the books that are in our schools, and I do not say that I will in this video.” She then went on to say, “but” and repeated the exact same reasoning from the video that public school books “could potentially amount to child pornography.”
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