The Guardian Angels roughed up and detained a man during a live television interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Tuesday. Guardian Angels founder and failed mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa was being interviewed during Hannity’s prime time show about the supposed migrant crime wave in New York City when the incident took place.
As Hannity was pontificating about how liberals were offering more assistance to migrants than veterans, Sliwa pointed behind the camera to say, “In fact our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner of 42nd and 7th.” Throwing up his hands, Sliwa announced, “They’ve taken over. They’ve taken over!”
In the footage, a handful of Guardian Angels wrestle a man to the ground, with one red beret-wearing “angel” holding the man in a headlock. Hannity transitioned from this live assault to a hit piece about Vice President Kamala Harris “quietly beginning [her] 2028 presidential campaign.”
The NYPD has told news outlets that the unidentified man is not a migrant at all but a resident of the Bronx. The man was given a summons for “disorderly conduct” (trying to disrupt an interview), but he was not charged with anything else—though The New York Times and the Associated Press say Sliwa claimed the man was “shoplifting.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Sliwa said he had believed the man was a migrant because he was “speaking Spanish” and because other Guardian Angels had encountered him with other Spanish speakers on previous patrols.
Police did not respond about whether or not the Guardian Angels involved in the incident were being investigated.
This isn’t the first time Sliwa has misrepresented his and the Guardian Angels’ “work” as crime stoppers. In 1992, Sliwa admitted to six of his group’s hoaxes, saying the media attention helped fuel his crime-fighting fabrications. “It became like an intoxicant, a narcotic.”
Sliwa has been in the news the last few months as an anti-asylum seeker activist. He has suggested housing newly arrived migrants at the infamous Rikers Island Jail complex. More recently, Sliwa was sued by his third wife for more than $500,000 in unpaid child support.
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