Republican Florida Rep. Brian Mast stated Tuesday on Fox Business that GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office is now aiding Gold Star father Steve Nikoui who was charged with disrupting President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
Mast appeared on “The Bottom Line” to discuss the charges brought against Nikoui after he yelled about the American marines who were killed during the infamous Afghanistan withdrawal, including his son. Nikoui recently revealed that his charges have not been dropped, noting that he was not surprised the Biden administration had not stepped in for his case after reporters questioned him. Mast, however, told the Fox Business hosts that since Nikoui’s interview, Johnson’s office has been able to “intervene successfully.
Mast called out Nikoui’s unfair treatment as he questioned why others weren’t arrested for disruptions during the event. (RELATED: ‘Marines!’: Gold Star Father Escorted From Congress For Interrupting Biden SOTU)
“So I’m told an update since that last interview, the Speaker’s office has been able to intervene successfully and make sure that the charges are dropped,” Mast said. “That’s what I’m being told as an update now this afternoon, but there’s a couple of things that I would say about that. Number one, you look at Steve Nikoui and you look at Stu Scheller – Lieutenant Colonel [Stuart] Scheller, United States Marine Corps – the only two individuals locked up over the Afghanistan withdrawal. Lieutenant Colonel Scheller was locked up, put into the brig for speaking out about it. And now Steve Nikoui is locked up after doing what he was charged with, which was demonstrating in the seat of government for the United States of America where our constitutional rights should preside louder than anywhere else. He was locked up for demonstrating.”
“And the final point that I’ll say on that is this, when I was down at the police station with him, I was told one of the most startling things,” he continued. “Because I said, ‘Hey, where’s everybody else? Where’s the members of Congress that were demonstrating and speaking up? Where’s the people that held him up on the road, the president up on the road from getting there?’ And they said, ‘Well, listen, there’s a different standard for members of Congress than there is for everybody else and that’s why there’s no members of Congress locked up.’ That should never be the case in the United States of America, that there’s a different set of standards for the members of the House versus those that are the ‘We the people’ that we are charged with representing.”
Nikoui was invited to Biden’s speech by Mast, who stated in a blog post that he wanted to remind Biden about the “damage he has done to national security and American families.” Following Nikoui’s heckling of Biden, he was escorted out and charged by the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, according to Fox News.