The wife of Republican Senator Josh Hawley filed a criminal complaint last month against one of the organizers of a protest outside their home in Virginia.
The individual was charged with an offense of illegal protest, but was not charged with threats or vandalism, as the senator in Missouri initially claimed. According to a police spokesperson, a local magistrate found enough ‘probable cause’ to issue a summons in the case.
Hawley’s office said the complaint was filed in a court in Fairfax County, Virginia, and the accused was identified as activist Patrick Young of Washington, DC. As of Friday morning, Young told ABC News he had not heard of a criminal charge that would not be made public until he received it.
“If a summons is issued, it is outrageous that a rich and powerful person – a US senator – could go to their magistrate to get a summons to harass a normal person,” Young said in a statement. said and admitted that he helped organize last month’s protest.
According to Virginia law, any citizen can file a criminal complaint and request a subpoena, although a magistrate must find enough ‘probable cause’ to issue one.
In the video posted online on January 4, protesters protested loudly in front of the Hawley House for nearly 30 minutes, objecting to his allegations that the presidential election in 2020 was illegal and that Joe Biden did not appear two days later. had to be certified. US President.
At the time, Hawley and the couple’s two sons were in Missouri, while his wife, Erin, and their newborn daughter were living in Vienna, Virginia.
Hawley posted on Twitter within hours of the protest that ‘Antifa villains’ shouted threats, vandalized and tried to slam our door open and condemned it all as ‘left-wing violence’. But protesters and others disputed his allegations, and police said they found no evidence of violence during the protest.
In a statement supporting her complaint, Erin Hawley largely tells what can be seen in the 50-minute video posted online, following the group of protesters as they gathered at a nearby mall and then to her family’s neighborhood walk, where they “scream menacingly,” she said.
The senator’s wife said she identified Young through news reports on the protest, organized by the self-identified ‘anti-fascist’ group ShutdownDC. As organizer of ShutdownDC, Young spoke to news agencies after the protest, defending it as ‘not threatening’.
He describes the whole protest to ABC News as a ‘candlelight vigil’.
As depicted in the video online, as many as 20 protesters stood just a short distance from the Hawleys’ front door, shouting furiously and using bullhorns while repeatedly cheering like ‘Shame on you’ and ‘Stand up, fight back’ .
Phrases like ‘Trump lost’ were written in chalk on the sidewalk and a handful of signs were placed in front of their house.
At one point, the senator’s wife opened the front door and calmly asked the crowd, while holding her baby, to ‘please clean’.
“We have neighbors and a baby, thank you,” she heard in the video.
A protest woman shouted back, ‘We need a future for your baby. ‘
In the statement supporting her complaint, Hawley’s wife said: “I was scared and locked the door.”
A few minutes later, a protester through a bullhorn announced that some of us were going to march [to] knocks on his door, maybe we can leave some signs behind, and we’re leaving a copy of it [the] Constitution in the hope that sen. Hawley actually reads it … and he stops his dangerous attack on our democracy. ‘
As seen in the video posted online, three protesters then approached the front door.
“[T]he calls and from below I hear loud noises at the door: knocking, pounding, shouting or a combination, “the senator’s wife wrote in her statement.” I went upstairs to see what was happening. … The protesters shouted from bulhorns and shouted ‘Come out, come out!’ I was scared. ‘
After about 12 minutes, an official of the Vienna Police Department arrived on the scene and told the group that according to the law, according to the video, it was ‘actually illegal’ to pick in front of a house. City ordinances also ban the use of bulhorns, a police department spokesman told ABC News.
They protested for another ten minutes after praying and more officers showed up.
Hawley’s office provided Erin Hawley’s statement to ABC News, which he said was filed with the complaint.
In her statement, she said, following the protest, she is now ‘afraid’ of her family and that they have employed private security, especially after protesters ‘threatened to return early in the morning or during the night’.
“[B]according to a citizen, the magistrate issued a summons to an accused for a violation of Virginia Code 18.2-419 (picking or disturbing the tranquility of the house), a violation in Class 3, ‘the spokesman for the Vienna police told ABC News.
Young calls such allegations ‘defamatory’.
On January 4, the day of the protest, the ShutdownDC group posted a message online warning that Hawley’s “unfounded” allegations that the presidential election was stolen in 2020 and that his efforts to stop Congress from doing so less than two days later confirmed would be “add ignition to an already dangerous situation.”
The group said “many” of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters were threatening to use violence against members of Congress and the police during a rally in Washington on January 6, when the election would be certified.
After Hawley first said the protesters threatened his family, ‘vandalized’ his house and ‘tried to open our door’, The Washington Post and other media questioned the accuracy of these allegations.
Associated Press noted that a video posted by activists and a description by local police did not match his account. ‘And The Washington Post noted that protesters and local police described the protest as peaceful, reporting that’ the police in Vienna said no one saw the doors of the Hawleys or their neighbors bouncing, that they heard no threats and also saw no vandalism. as chalk on the sidewalk. ‘
In response to Hawley on Twitter accused The Washington Post of ‘pictures lie of the Antifa group now describing themselves as sweet angels.’
“You screamed through bulhorns, shouted at my wife when she asked you to leave, vandalized property, knocked on our door and terrorized neighbors,” Hawley tweeted. “You are foam. And we will not be intimidated.”
Hawley repeated his report on Fox News, saying: “The point was to terrorize and intimidate.”
According to a Hawley spokesman, the public controversy over the senator’s initial allegations has raised new security concerns.
“Because of the attacks in the media and left over the past few weeks, Josh’s family has been subjected to numerous threats to their lives monitored by authorities,” Hawley’s communications director Kelli Ford told ABC News in a statement.
On the morning of January 6, less than 48 hours after the protest at his home, Hawley arrived on Capitol Hill, ready to formally object to Joe Biden being certified as the next president.
After a violent Trump mob stormed the Capitol, killing five people and delaying certification for several hours, Hawley was one of only a handful of senators who voted against confirming the election college result.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security issued a rare public bulletin, warning: “Information suggests that some ideologically motivated violent extremists with objections to … the presidential transition, as well as other allegations fueled by false narratives, may continue to to mobilize. to incite or commit violence. ‘
The “increased threat environment”, according to DHS, will continue for weeks.