WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael Mukasey collapsed Thursday evening while delivering a speech to a prominent legal group and was rushed to George Washington University Hospital.
“The attorney general is conscious, conversant and alert,” Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said after doctors admitted Mukasey to the hospital for the night.
The incident occurred at an annual Federalist Society gathering. A person who attended the dinner said Mukasey was visibly shaking and perhaps slurring his words before he fell to the floor.
Video footage showed a tuxedo-clad Mukasey, 67, falling behind a lectern as FBI agents in his security detail raced to his side.
Washington fire and emergency services personnel were called. Alan Etter, a fire department spokesman, said firefighters treated a man at the hotel who had suffered a fainting spell, but he declined to identify the man, citing privacy laws. The patient was conscious, had no trouble breathing and was able to speak with rescue personnel, Etter said.
The man was taken to the hospital as a priority-one patient as a precaution but apparently had a “general illness” that was not thought to be life-threatening, Etter said.
A second man, 29, was also taken to a hospital for observation after reporting that he was upset by the fainting spell, officials said. The two episodes prompted authorities to take hazardous-material tests for potential dangers, but officials found no sign of harmful chemicals at the hotel.
A New York lawyer at the black-tie dinner said that Mukasey’s speech became noticeably slower and that it appeared at first that he might be choking up.
“He was clearly struggling. Then his face went limp, he started shaking as if he were having a seizure, and then he fell back,” said the lawyer, who was sitting 50 yards from the stage.
Mukasey’s security detail immediately ordered all the lights in the room to be dimmed and told guests not to leave the room. It took paramedics at least 15 minutes to arrive, a witness said, during which time the room was virtually silent. After Mukasey was taken out on a stretcher, someone asked that everyone say a prayer for him before the gathering dispersed.
Former Republican Rep. David McIntosh of Indiana led the group in prayer after the incident.
Justice Department officials gathered at the hospital and said they would release more information after consulting with doctors there.
Mukasey has served as the nation’s chief law enforcement official since last winter. He is a retired federal judge from New York who accepted the taxing job because of his interest in national security, a topic he addressed in his remarks Thursday evening.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
