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Democrat candidate seen sobbing, praying in patrol car after DUI arrest: Video

Democrat candidate seen sobbing, praying in patrol car after DUI arrest: Video

Washington state Democrat Krista Perez, who is running for a state House seat, was seen on police video admitting to drinking wine, declining field sobriety tests and begging to go home before praying and crying in the back of a patrol car after her DUI arrest. Perez finished first in last month’s primary in the 29th Legislative District, Position 1, and will face incumbent state Rep. Melanie Morgan, also a Democrat, in November, as the top two candidates advance to the general. Tacoma Police said Perez’s 2019 Chevrolet Silverado allegedly struck a parked car on South G Street shortly after midnight on August 11, setting off a chain reaction that damaged five vehicles, according to The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red. Prosecutors charged her with DUI, with a refusal enhancement in connection with the collision and a later encounter with police. MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHAIRMAN ADMITS TO SUFFICIENT FACTS IN JUNE DRUNKEN DRIVING CASE Body camera footage shows police questioning Perez after the crash and her subsequent arrest, while footage from the backseat of the patrol car shows her praying and sobbing, according to video obtained by The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red. After police arrive at the scene, Perez told an officer she did not understand what was going on and claims she was not involved in an accident, the footage shows. “Did you get into an accident here?” the officer asks. “I did not,” Perez responded. The officer then asked what happened. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in an accident before,” she replied. She also said she switched insurers just weeks before the incident when asked for her documents. She was able to tell the officer the name of the insurance company. Perez told the officer she was driving from a friend’s business on Tacoma Avenue South when the collision happened. “Did you have anything to drink tonight?” the officer asked. “I just had some wine while I was there,” Perez replied. Asked how much wine she had, Perez said she had one glass. When the officer asked how big the glass was, she told him, “I think you might need to contact the business.” The officer then asked her to rate her sobriety on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being completely sober. She first told the officer that she wants to go home. But when asked a second time, she rated herself a four. The officer then asked her to take standardized field sobriety tests but stated multiple times that the tests are optional. “So it’s a series of tests that I take you through to make sure to see if you’re impaired by alcohol, or you’re not. Are you okay with doing that? It’s totally voluntary,” he said. Perez declined the tests, kept saying she wanted to go home and repeatedly said that she was “confused.” “Not right now. I’d like to go home first,” she said. “You’re not going to go home first. I’m going to tell you that right now, okay? So your options between the test, yes or no, that’s going to be determined tonight, right now, not when you go home. So would you like to take these tests or no?” the officer asked. Perez responded by asking if she was allowed to decline the tests. “You do have a choice. You can either say yes, or you can say no. They’re totally voluntary tests,” the officer answered. “Yeah, I would like to go home first,” she replied. The officer asked whether her answer meant she was declining the tests, and she said yes. She was then told she was under arrest for DUI and to put her hands behind her back. “Hold on. Hold on. One second. Hold on,” she said. Perez repeatedly told the officer that she did “not know what any of this means.” He told her it means she is under arrest for DUI. Under Washington state law, roadside sobriety tests are not required and declining them is separate from the refusal enhancement prosecutors allege in Perez’s case. According to an arrest report cited by The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red, the enhancement stems from what occurred later at Tacoma Police headquarters, where police said she did not provide a usable breath sample after three attempts before the machine timed out. BODYCAM SHOWS TONY ROMO ARGUING WITH OFFICER BEFORE REFUSING BREATH TEST DURING DUI ARREST Inside the patrol car, she can be seen in the footage sobbing, praying and asking God to help her, with her crying lasting several minutes. “Help me, God. Help me. Help me. Holy Spirit, help me, God,” she said. State law does not prohibit someone with a DUI charge from serving in the legislature. Other Democrat lawmakers have kept their seats after an alcohol-related incident, including House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, who apologized after acknowledging he drank alcohol before a House Appropriations Committee hearing in February. “I made a poor choice last night by drinking alcohol before we had finished our work for the day. I am disappointed in myself and take responsibility for that poor choice. It won’t happen again, and I’m committed to completing my work this session without alcohol,” Fitzgibbon said in a statement at the time to The Jason Rantz Show on Seattle Red.

Dem insurgent turns on the charm with party establishment as Schumer leaves bitter feud hanging

Dem insurgent turns on the charm with party establishment as Schumer leaves bitter feud hanging

Michigan’s insurgent progressive Senate nominee ran as far as he could from Washington, D.C., but, on Wednesday, he traveled to the nation’s Capitol for a closed-door meeting with top Democratic brass as the race for power intensifies. Abdul El-Sayed met with top Senate Democrats just hundreds of yards away from Congress, where lawmakers and the wunderkind candidate huddled to discuss his campaign and how to keep Michigan blue. Many left boasting that the Wolverine State would not turn a shade of purple.  But few, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., would say whether the fences broken during El-Sayed’s primary fight had been mended. SCHUMER DUCKS QUESTION ON CAMPAIGNING WITH SOCIALIST CANDIDATE WHO REFUSES TO BACK HIM AS LEADER “Look, we have to win Michigan, and we had a great and friendly meeting,” Schumer said when asked by Fox News Digital if he and El-Sayed had moved on from their differences. Still, El-Sayed held court with Democratic brass for hours at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s (DSCC) headquarters in Washington, where a steady flow of lawmakers — both allies and skeptics of his Senate bid — milled in and out of the building throughout the day. Schumer and Democrats are confident and determined that they can flip the Senate, which Republicans hold with a 53-47 margin. Losing Michigan to the GOP and former Rep. Mike Rogers would serve a mortal blow to that push. “He’s gonna win,” Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who is also the DSCC chair, said. The key mission for Democrats is getting independents and Republicans on the fence. But few, including Schumer, said they would actually hit the campaign trail with El-Sayed. It all comes after El-Sayed and Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., locked horns in one of the most bitter Democratic primary fights of this cycle that pitted the Democratic old guard versus a progressive movement gaining steam across the country. SEE IT: DEM SENATORS RALLY BEHIND EL-SAYED BUT DUCK QUESTIONS ON PROGRESSIVE AGENDA Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who initially endorsed Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow before she dropped out, told Fox News Digital, “Obviously, primaries can get really hot, and the Michigan primary got hot. “This is what you do after a primary is you try to unite the party and then you do the work to reach out and cross over to independent voters and Republican voters,” Murphy added. “So, I don’t think anybody should be surprised that he’s trying to build bridges after a heated primary. That’s what good candidates, that’s what winning candidates do.” Another McMorrow backer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., painted a rosy picture of the closed-door session and noted it was “hard to hear in there because so many people were talking and laughing and wanted to hear about the campaign. “He makes good connections because it’s a lot of people in there who are talking about, ‘What can we do next? What can we do to lower costs for families? What can we do to make this government work better for working people?’ So, it was a very enthusiastic, very cheerful group of people.” Retiring Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., whose seat El-Sayed is gunning for, initially endorsed Stevens. Now, he’s shifting gears. DEMS’ LEFTWARD LURCH GETS LEGS AS EL-SAYED’S MICHIGAN SENATE VICTORY SPARKS PARTY DEBATE “I’m endorsing him, and he’s been getting support across the board in Michigan. The Democrats are coming together,” Peters said in response to a question about whether the Democratic establishment was uniting behind El-Sayed. “We understand how important this election is.” Others were more keen to lend an assist to El-Sayed, including Murphy and Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who said, “I’m gonna be in Michigan here in a couple of weeks.” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who is running for re-election in deep blue Massachusetts, said that Democrats’ strategy heading into the final stretch was pitching an affordability agenda, and El-Sayed “is the answer.” “I’m helping him. I think we’re all gonna help,” Markey said when asked if he would raise money for El-Sayed. The specter of El-Sayed’s relationship with controversial Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who helped to amplify his campaign in the primary battle, wasn’t something that Democrats focused on during their huddle. “Hasan what?,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told Fox News Digital when asked if he came up during the meeting. “I don’t even know who that is.” When asked if Piker came up or if Democrats encouraged El-Sayed to further distance himself from him, Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said, “Not in terms of the conversation. Like I said, I was just trying to get to know him.” After initially dodging Fox News Digital’s question on whether he would campaign with Piker, El-Sayed later told reporters, “This conversation is so far removed from what people are talking about. “Everyday, in Michigan, people sit at their kitchen tables and ask, ‘How am I going to make this work next month?’ That’s not a middle, right, left issue, that’s a basic affordability issue.” When further pressed, he countered that Michigan voters “really don’t care about that.” “They really don’t,” El-Sayed said.

Lawmakers say they are standing at the gates against ‘Trojan horses’ promoting malign foreign interests

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a series of exclusive interviews with Fox News Digital, lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee sounded the alarm on a sprawling network of “Trojan horse” activists, nonprofits and social media influencers allegedly amplifying the hostile messages of foreign adversaries straight through the open gates of American democracy. The warning came into sharp focus Tuesday when CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin and two fellow activists walked into House Rayburn 2172 for a hearing on covert foreign influence operations, then strategically positioned themselves behind witnesses in T-shirts supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Communist Party of Cuba. About 30 minutes into the hearing, South and Central Asia Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., stopped the hearing and had Capitol Police escort them out. LAWMAKERS THROW OUT ‘TROJAN HORSE’ ACTIVISTS THEY SAY ARE ENGAGED IN AMERICAN SUBVERSION “They’re coming in, trying to look like one thing, but we know that once they’re inside the gates that those doors are going to spring open, and there’s a whole other motivation for what they’re trying to do,” Huizenga told Fox News Digital. At the center of the controversy is communist tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, who married CodePink co-founder Jodie Evans in a tropical wedding in Jamaica in 2017, soon after funneling $285 million to six pro-China, pro-communist, anti-American nonprofits in the U.S., including CodePink, according to a Fox News Digital investigation. Lawmakers say the answer is transparency and following the money and exposing who finances the alleged “Trojan horse.” In their series of interviews, Huizenga and other committee members explained how the modern “Trojan horse” isn’t made of wood but rather a network of activists, nonprofits, social media influencers and other ostensibly American voices that foreign governments and foreign-linked actors can allegedly fund, amplify or exploit to carry their messages through the open gates of American democracy. “They’re coming in, trying to look like one thing, but we know that once they’re inside the gates that those doors are going to spring open and there’s a whole other motivation for what they’re trying to do,” Huizenga told Fox News Digital. At the hearing, devoted to “Trojan Horses: Covert Foreign Malign Influence Operations in America,” lawmakers expressed concern about how the Communist Party of China, Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Communist Party of Cuba spread their propaganda and influence in the U.S. The phrase “Trojan horse” comes from the ancient Greek story of soldiers concealed inside a wooden horse presented to the city of Troy. Once the horse was taken behind the city’s fortified walls, the soldiers emerged and opened the gates, destroying Troy. Huizenga stressed that Americans can hold sincere beliefs while also having those messages funded or amplified by foreign actors without necessarily knowing it. He argued that the answer to foreign influence is exposing the origins of the messaging through transparency and robust debate. Inside the hearing room, as Fox News Digital reported, Benjamin and her fellow CodePink activists offered a vivid illustration of the debate over how political messages are created and amplified. They sat directly behind the witnesses, placing their T-shirts in the sight line of the official committee cameras. Benjamin then turned toward a television monitor on the side of the hearing room displaying the official video feed. She pulled out her phone, zoomed in on the image of herself and a fellow activist appearing behind the witnesses and took photo after photo of the screen. HOUSE PANEL PROBES FOREIGN ‘TROJAN HORSES’ AS SINGHAM SCRUTINY WIDENS Huizenga said he viewed the episode as political theater designed for an audience beyond the committee room. “This isn’t about discourse. This is about disruption,” Huizenga told Fox News Digital. “It’s all planned out. You see people in the crowd filming with their phones, getting ready. You knew something was going to happen because, all of a sudden, the phones would come out. “It’s really about theatrics,” he added, arguing that confrontations can subsequently be circulated on social media to attract attention, donations and volunteers. The episode captured the central tension running through the hearing: How does the United States expose genuine covert foreign influence without treating protected American political speech as foreign subversion? “Transparency. Transparency is the watchword,” Huizenga told Fox News Digital. “We really need to make sure that people know not only the why, but the who is behind all this.” Rep. Michael Baumgartner, R-Wash., told Fox News Digital that America’s open political system creates opportunities for foreign governments to try to influence legitimate domestic debates through social media, universities and other institutions. “The American people need transparency and need to understand what is going on in these public policy discussions and whether it’s podcast hosts, certain actors on social media or things going on our college campuses,” Baumgartner said. “We need to know who’s behind it and what their motivations are.” Baumgartner pointed to “clear transparency on this issue” as a solution, adding that if evidence showed organizations were acting on behalf of foreign governments without complying with applicable disclosure laws, the matter could potentially be referred to the Justice Department, which oversees the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA. The law requires that people and organizations acting on behalf of foreign interests register with the Justice Department. Other lawmakers said the modern Trojan horse doesn’t necessarily have to walk physically through the doors of Congress, but rather arrive via social media. Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., described social media, influencers and protests as potential channels through which foreign governments influence American political debate. He said “it’s a real issue, whether it’s on social media, influencers, protests, these things are all designed to destabilize our country.” Fine characterized what experts call “cognitive warfare” as “using our information platforms to try to poison people’s minds and to create division from within.” Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., focused on another battlefield: artificial intelligence. “Trojan horses are things like the announcement that we should slow down on AI,” Issa told Fox News Digital, arguing that