Like far-left Democratic Representative LaMonica McIver (N.J.), equally far-left Democrat Senator Alex Padilla of California must think some people are above the law, despite his many protestations on X that “no one is above the law.”
Yesterday, he rudely interrupted remarks to reporters by Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem in the federal building in West Los Angeles, scene of the targeted immigration enforcement that has netted more than 110 illegal-alien criminals.
Now, like McIver, who faces federal felony charges for assaulting two federal agents at an illegal-alien detention facility in New Jersey, Padilla wants to claim he was wronged. Democratic colleagues agree.
The problem: Video doesn’t lie.
Pushing and Shoving
Noem was speaking when Padilla rudely interrupted and started shouting. Noem’s security detail, which included FBI and Secret Service agents, surrounded and tried to subdue him. Padilla fought back. Agents took him from the room, forced him to the ground, and handcuffed him.
The two sides dispute whether Padilla identified himself. Video shows him identifying himself only when agents try to remove him from the room.
On CNN, Padilla said he was in the building to get a briefing on the military’s presence in Los Angeles. His briefing was delayed because of Noem’s presser, he said, and so he asked an FBI agent and National Guardsman to escort him to the room where she was speaking.
When Noem said President Trump would “liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership,” Padilla said, he couldn’t hold back.
He says he identified himself and began to ask a question, but agents swarmed. As well, he said, those who escorted him knew he was a senator. They roughed him up and cuffed him anyway. Reported The New York Times:
In an interview hours later, Mr. Padilla said that he had demanded to know why he had been detained and where he was being escorted “when of all people, Corey Lewandowski” — a combative former Trump campaign aide and adviser to Ms. Noem — “comes running down the hall and he starts yelling, ‘Let him go! Let him go!’”
DHS says otherwise. The agency says he didn’t identify himself and was not wearing his Senate security pin. Agents mistook him for an attacker. Video shows Padilla’s interrupting Noem without identifying himself.
“With regard to the incident in LA this afternoon, the Senator in question was not wearing a security pin and physically resisted law enforcement when confronted,” Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino wrote on X:
Our FBI personnel acted completely appropriately while assisting Secret Service and we are grateful for their professionalism and service.
Dems Wail
Democratic backers of Padilla’s antics wept and gnashed their teeth on X.
Wrote California Governor Gavin Newsom:
If they can handcuff a U.S. Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.
“A sitting U.S. Senator was thrown to the ground and handcuffed for simply trying to ask a question,” Governor Wes Moore of Maryland wrote:
The weaponization of our justice system and the normalization of political violence is unacceptable.
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker thinks Padilla was just doing his job.
“All Senator Padilla wanted was to do his job and get the questions his constituents had answered — instead, he was thrown to the ground and handcuffed,” he wrote on X:
This is Donald Trump’s America, where they attack our freedoms.
We cannot be intimidated or scared by their abuses of power.
And Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York wants answers, he fumed on the Senate floor. “Senator Padilla was there legitimately in that building, to ask questions of what’s going on in California, which everybody wants to know answers to,” he said:
We don’t get answers when we ask the administration questions in one way or another.
So Senator Padilla was exercising his duty as a senator for his constituents to try and find out what happened. And instead he gets manhandled, thrown out of the room, thrown on the ground and handcuffed. …
It’s despicable. It’s disgusting.
Wiser Minds
Not so fast, said ESPN commentator Stephen Smith, a commonsense man of the Left who is increasingly dabbling in politics. Smith noted the obvious. Padilla needn’t have interrupted Noem.
“Here you have this senator, Alex Padilla. Can Kristi Neom speak?” Smith began:
Could you have waited until she finished to ask your questions, to shout your questions? You are a senator, right? You couldn’t wait? So that was just you out of control because you were just losing it, huh? You, a United States senator, couldn’t compose yourself and let the head of Homeland Security finish her thought before you ask a question. Couldn’t do that, huh? Couldn’t do it, huh?
GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana thinks the Senate should censure the out-of-control Padilla.
Second Democrat Tussle With Federal Agents
For his part, Padilla comes by his bias for illegal aliens honestly. His Senate biography says he is the “proud son” of Mexican immigrants, notably omitting whether they entered the country legally. But when Padilla landed in the U.S. Senate, The Washington Post reported that his father admitted he and his wife were illegal aliens before he became a naturalized citizen:
“Ilegales,” his father, Santos Padilla, now 80 and a naturalized U.S. citizen, said with a sweep of his hand following Mass one recent Sunday when asked how he and his late wife arrived in the United States. “Like everyone.”
That aside, Padilla is the second loud-mouth Democrat to mix it up with federal agents and come out on the losing end.
Earlier this week, a federal grand jury indicted McIver on three felony counts of assaulting two federal agents during a fracas outside an illegal-alien detention facility in Newark.
And like Padilla, McIver claims the federal agents were at fault.
