MIAMI — The Republican Party canvasser who was brutally beaten in Hialeah on Sunday did not say the attack was politically motivated when police officers first interviewed him that evening, according to a police spokesman.
An initial incident report said nothing about politics.
But on Monday morning, after talking to the victim’s father, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted that the canvasser was attacked “by 4 animals who told him Republicans weren’t allowed in their neighborhood.”
When Hialeah police reinterviewed the canvasser, Christopher Monzon, hours after the Rubio tweet, he told them he did believe politics played a role in his beating. In a sworn statement Monday afternoon, Monzon — who was canvassing for the Republican Party of Florida and has long-standing ties to the white supremacist movement — said one of his attackers told him that “that he could not pass through because he was a Republican,” a police report released late Tuesday shows.
“He didn’t mention it in the first interview. He did in the second,” Hialeah Police Department Sgt. José Torres told the Miami Herald. “We’re not going to say that the whole entire situation was politically motivated, but the guy was wearing a Marco Rubio shirt.”
When asked about the discrepancy between the initial statement and the subsequent interview, Torres said that trauma victims don’t always immediately remember all the details when they talk to police.
Torres also said that Monzon, 27, initially refused medical treatment at the scene before later requesting to be taken to a hospital.
Monzon is now at home recovering from his injuries, including a fractured eye socket and broken nose. His parents said he was not well enough to answer questions Wednesday.
In an email, a spokeswoman for Rubio said Monzon’s father had told the senator Monday morning that the attack was politically motivated.
“First you spend two days smearing the victim and now you accuse him of lying,” the spokeswoman, Elizabeth Gregory said in an email. “You are either dishonest or misinformed. The victim’s father was on Spanish radio ... discussing the political nature of this attack. And he told the Senator the exact same thing ... when they spoke for the first time when the Senator called to check on his son’s condition.”
A man identifying himself as the victim’s father called in to Radio Mambí on Monday morning, according to a recording posted to Twitter. He said his son was attacked while campaigning for the Republican Party in a neighborhood in Hialeah and that he had just spoken to “Tallahassee” about what happened after being up all night at the hospital. His son had also recently met Rubio, the man said, and taken photos with him.
The host, Rosa Peña, was quick to denounce the attack as politically motivated.
“This is one of the ways that anarchist elements, paid leftists — paid by other totally vested interests — do this to completely terrorize the situation,” Peña said.
The father, who did not give his name on the broadcast, did not say anything during the segment about the son being told that Republicans weren’t welcome in the neighborhood — or relate any other comment from the attackers.
Asked late Wednesday why Rubio believed the attack was politically motivated, Gregory wrote: “The Senator’s tweets are based on what the father and son told him in his conversations. They were later corroborated by the police report.”
Rubio’s Monday morning tweet thrust a street fight into the middle of his reelection campaign against U.S. Rep. Val Demings, a Democrat.
He has since tweeted about the incident several times, criticizing the media’s coverage of Monzon’s long association with a white nationalist group called the League of the South and his arrest for violent behavior at a protest against stripping the names of Confederate generals off streets in Hollywood, Florida, as well as his presence at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
“Local media spent 2 days treating the GOP canvasser who was attacked as a criminal & denying the attack was politically motivated,” Rubio tweeted Wednesday.
Despite both Rubio and the father describing the as attackers “four animals,” police say they currently believe only two attackers were involved.
Police made one arrest earlier this week, charging Javier Lopez, 25, of Hialeah, with aggravated battery. Late Tuesday, they arrested another man, Jonathan Casanova, 27, of Miami, on the same charge.
In Casanova’s arrest report, police said Monzon was canvassing for Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis on a Hialeah street Sunday when Lopez and Casanova blocked his path. They began arguing and Lopez rushed Monzon and pushed him to the ground before Casanova started kicking him in the head, the report states. Casanova then went to his car, brought out his two German shepherds and “began to give commands to the dogs to attack and bite the victim,” according to the police report.
Monzon said it was Casanova who told him he couldn’t pass through because of the canvasser’s party affiliation.
Casanaova has been arrested several times in Miami-Dade, records show, the most serious case involving an armed robbery in 2016.
Casanova, described in that previous arrest report as a member of Hialeah gang known as 24th Avenue, was accused of kidnapping and robbing at gunpoint a man he believed was a rival. Casanova pleaded guilty and accepted probation; he was granted a “withhold of adjudication,” which means the case didn’t count as a felony conviction.
He signed up to vote in 2012 and declared no-party-affiliation as of 2016, but is no longer listed as a registered voter, according to state records. He is in county jail, awaiting release on bond.
Lopez has never voted, his mother, a registered Republican, told the Herald earlier this week. She said the attack had nothing to do with politics.
Monzon has earned more than $10,000 canvassing for Florida’s GOP since June, according to federal campaign finance records.
On Tuesday night, Hialeah’s City Council discussed passing an ordinance to protect campaign workers.
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(Miami Herald staff writers Charles Rabin, Ana Claudia Chacin and Michelle Marchante contributed to this report.)
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