The St. Louis couple under investigation for pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters calmly walking past their home popped up to rail about lawlessness during a Donald Trump campaign video Friday.
Mark McCloskey, and his wife, Patricia McCloskey, who work together as personal injury attorneys, were captured on video brandishing a pistol and an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle as demonstrators walked past their palatial home last month.
While critics called for their arrest, the two were hailed as heroes by right-wing gun lovers who claim they were protecting their home. The McCloskeys said the “angry mob” had been plotting to take over their house and kill them and their dog. But video of the protest that went viral shows protesters calmly walking along the sidewalk and not confronting the two.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend and a Trump campaign staffer, hosted the pair on the cable news style video “Making the Case,” posted to the campaign’s social media pages on Friday night. The former Fox News personality claimed, without any evidence, that the protesters were going to burn down the home and told the McCloskeys: “God bless you guys ... what was going on through your mind?”
“I thought I was going to die,” said Mark McCloskey. Despite video evidence contradicting him, he insisted that some 500 protesters were “all rushing towards us” while “we’re just out in the east patio trying to barbecue dinner.”
Guilfoyle responded: “That’s so terrifying.”
She added, without irony: “Apparently people are allowed to just burn down other people’s homes or shoot people or kill people. It’s out of control.” Guilfoyle told Patricia McCloskey that she was “inspirational” and called the couple “courageous.”
Mark McCloskey has claimed protesters smashed through a gate to get to the neighbourhood, but, again, videos don’t support that.
St. Louis police armed with a search warrant seized Mark McCloskey’s rifle last week. “They took my AR,” he told a right-wing radio show. “I’m absolutely surprised by this.”
Trump is attempting to make the couple folk heroes, and has threatened to take action if they are charged with any crime.
Kim Gardner, the circuit attorney for St. Louis County, accused Trump of playing politics by “spreading misinformation and distorting the truth.”
Though she hasn’t yet decided whether to charge the McCloskeys with a crime, Gardner warned: “We will not tolerate the use of force against those exercising their First Amendment rights, and will use the full power of Missouri law to hold people accountable.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported last week that the McCloskeys have a reputation as obnoxious neighbours who have “nearly constantly sued other people and ordered people off their property.”
They have sued neighbours for making changes to their gravel road, sued a former employer for wrongful termination, sued others for defamation, and asserted “squatters’ rights” on common neighbourhood property, according to the newspaper.
The common property was apparently part of the land they claimed to be guarding with their guns from an “angry mob.” Mark McCloskey said in an affidavit last year that he had once challenged a neighbour cutting through that property “at gunpoint.”