Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called out “dangerous” police failures at the US Capitol after she was sexually harassed by a “disgusting” far-right troll outside the building.
The congressman was harassed on Wednesday as she walked up toward the Capitol building, when she was approached by Alex Stein, a far right commentator.
“Here’s AOC, my favourite big booty Latina,” says Stein. “I love you AOC, you’re my favourite. She wants to kill babies but she’s still beautiful, you look very beautiful in that dress, you look very sexy”.
The congresswoman then turned to confront Stein by “posing for a selfie” in his video. She walked away as he continued to sexually harass her, pointing.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter afterwards: “I posted about a deeply disgusting incident that happened today on the Capitol steps, but took it down because it’s clearly someone seeking extremist fame.”
“It’s just a bummer to work in an institution that openly allowed this, but talking about it only invites more,” she continued. “Just really sad.”
She added in a follow-up tweet: “Here is a video he posted of the incident. I was actually walking over to deck him because if no one will protect us then I’ll do it myself but I needed to catch a vote more than a case today”.
Stein, who responded on Twitter by saying “If you really love me you would of at least tagged me”, continued by endlessly tweeting about the congresswoman on Wednesday night.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez went on to discuss the encounter with Stein on Instagram, where she told her followers that it was “crazy” that a Capitol police officer had not stepped-in to confront Stein.
“I think the thing that was so crazy about that incident is not even that it happened but that it happened on the Capitol steps right in front of a Capitol police officer and this dude was engaged (in sexual harassment)”.
“This wasn’t about a political opinion or protest or anything like that, he was engaged in very clearly sexually threatening aggressive behaviour right in front of a Capitol police officer, he wasn’t even asked to take a step back,” said Ms Ocasio-Cortez.
Saying the officer “was just cool with it”, the Democrat said the encounter reminded her of videos allegedly showing police officers “sympathising” with pro-Trump rioters on January 6 by removing barricades around the building as they become overwhelmed. As was one officer seen posing for a selfie with a rioter inside the halls of Congress.
“I really just cant help but think about all of that footage evidence that we saw of all these Capitol police officers helping, I mean sympathetic to the insurrectionists on January ,” said Ms Ocasio-Cortez. “Everyone just decided it was too politically difficult to deal with so they all just brush it under the rug.”
She added: “To this day there has never been a (thorough) investigation into that, ever, so to this day we have no idea what officers are safe to be around, we have no idea if any of those officers and the ones with massive weapons were with that crowd, or if they weren’t”.
“And we saw a lot of that show up not in our politics but in the State of the Union,” the Democrat said of police funding, “because now both parties are in a contest about how much money they can shovel in the system without holding any of it crically accountable it its dangerous.”
Although claims officers helped rioters have been disputed, six Capitol Police officers were placed on administrative leave for their actions that day, Politico reported last year. Five people were killed as a pro-Trump mob attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election during the attack.
A spokesperson for US Capitol Police told The Independent that there was no criminal act committed by Stein, whose actions toward Ms Ocasio-Cortez were described as being “inappropriate”.
“Last night a man outside the US Capitol Building recorded a video of himself making crude comments to a Member of Congress,” the department said. “The comments, although inappropriate, are not criminal.”
“In the video, the man never threatened or touched the Congresswoman. Out of an abundance of caution, our officers stopped the man and ran his information, which did not show any warrants.”
