MIAMI — Christopher Monzon, the GOP canvasser beaten a week ago in Hialeah in what he says was a politically motivated attack, had a message for his fellow Republicans.
“They want to destroy us all,” Monzon said in a defiant speech Sunday about those he sees as violently opposed to Republicans, including the political left, members of the media and his assailants. “They’re not hiding it anymore.”
Speaking at a small Miami Springs rally in his lengthiest comments since the assault, Monzon told the story of how he was injured in an East Hialeah neighborhood last Sunday while passing out GOP fliers and wearing campaign gear for Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“I was just doing my job,” he said. “They told me, ‘You can’t cross through here.”
He said he explained he was canvassing but said the men continued to harass him.
“We don’t want you Republicans giving out your campaign propaganda here in our neighborhood,” they said, in Monzon’s telling, adding “F— Marco Rubio” and “Get out of here, or we’re going to beat you down. You’re lucky we don’t fill you up with lead right now.”
“I’ll be honest, it got my blood boiling because I am a free American,” Monzon, 27, said, adding in Spanish that “I defended myself in order to finish my job.”
Although Monzon gave a detailed account of the role politics played in his beating during his speech, he made no mention of that when police first interviewed him the previous Sunday night. The next day, his father called into a local radio station and said his son had been attacked while canvassing. Then, after talking to the father, Rubio tweeted Monday morning that Monzon had been “brutally attacked by 4 animals who told him Republicans weren’t allowed in their neighborhood.” Only when detectives subsequently reinterviewed Monzon that afternoon did he say that the attack was politically motivated, records show.
Hialeah police have arrested two men they say beat up Monzon, Javier Jesus Lopez, 25, and Jonathan Alexander Casanova, 27. Both men have lengthy criminal records, including arrests for violence. They have been charged with aggravated battery.
Lopez’s mother, a registered Republican told the Miami Herald that she talked to her son in jail and he said the attack was not political. The Herald has not been able to reach Casanova.
The incident made national news after Rubio’s tweet. Happening just weeks before Election Day, Monzon’s beating sparked fears of political violence. Democrats have criticized Rubio for concluding the assault was politically motivated before police have finished their investigation. They also asked why Rubio has not denounced Monzon’s history with white supremacy.
The canvasser thanked Rubio for “defending” him.
His fiery appearance at the rally Sunday, organized by the Miami Springs Republican Club, stood in stark contrast to brief comments he made at a rally the day before, held in Hialeah by the Proud Boys, a radical right-wing group whose leaders have been charged with “seditious conspiracy” over the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. At the Saturday rally, Monzon focused on condemning political violence. On Sunday, he spoke with anger about the incident and those he holds responsible. He also limped noticeably Sunday, although he seemed to walk with less difficulty when he cast a ballot at a Hialeah polling place Saturday.
“I think I can stand for the anthem,” he said Sunday in Miami Springs as rallygoers rose to sing.
Attendees welcomed Monzon, vice president of the Miami Springs GOP, with applause and well-wishes.
“Our vice president and our hero,” said Vince Medel, who runs the Miami Springs GOP. “I know that he looks great right now but when I first saw him that first evening, I was afraid for [his] life.”
Monzon delivered his speech sitting down with a microphone to a crowd of about two dozen people. Afterward, he declined to answer specific questions, including addressing his long-standing ties to the white supremacist movement — which he says he has now rejected — and why he didn’t tell police the attack was politically motivated when they first interviewed him last week.
‘Why lie?’
While Rubio said the canvasser was assaulted by “4 animals,” Monzon described three attackers in his speech, including Lopez’s father, Sergio Lopez, who he said threw him to the ground. He said Lopez told him, “There are no Republicans here, get out of here.”
In a phone interview Sunday, Sergio Lopez’s wife, Diana Rosa Lopez, denied Monzon’s account of her husband’s actions.
“My husband did not say that,” she said, adding about the allegations of violence: “My husband would never do something like that.”
Diana Lopez said she was in her living room and her husband in the kitchen when the fight broke out outside. She said she and her husband ran to break up the fight. Her husband pulled Monzon away while she coaxed her son away from the fight, she said.
“At no time when he was with my husband did he get hurt,” Diana Lopez said. “We were only there to help [Monzon].”
Quickly, Monzon pulled away from her husband, she said, and a second fight broke out between her son and the canvasser before neighbors came out and helped break it up for good.
“Why lie? I don’t understand,” said Diana Lopez. “My son is going to get what he deserves.”
Hialeah is overwhelmingly Republican. Sergio Lopez is registered with no party affiliation. His wife is a registered Republican. Javier Lopez has never registered to vote. Casanova was registered NPA but is no longer a voter.
Monzon’s father told the Herald Sunday that Sergio Lopez did try to break up the fight after initially being part of it.
In his speech, Monzon also said Casanova had set two German shepherds to attack him, echoing what he told police, according to an incident report. But Monzon’s father confirmed to the Miami Herald that there had actually only been one dog involved — an account backed up to the Herald by a neighbor who saw Lopez and Casanova hanging out on the street shortly before the attack.
Before Monzon’s speech, Frank de Varona, a Bay of Pigs veteran, led the crowd in prayer, urging Americans to vote for Republicans.
“We pray that they do not not cease to be Christians when they enter the voting booth,” he said.
De Varona also praised Monzon for being a member of the John Birch Society, saying he had addressed the extreme anti-communist group, known as a hotbed of conspiracy theories, several times.
Everyone agreed that Monzon — who belonged to a white supremacist organization called the League of the South, attended the infamous Unite the Right Rally in 2017 and used hateful and racist rhetoric repeatedly online — had left his radical views behind.
“He was young and stupid,” Medel said. “He used to fly the Dixie flag. I told him those days are over.”
Medel said he had hoped for a larger crowd Sunday, expecting 50 to 60 people.
“Every time someone says ‘Proud Boy,’ everyone spreads out and keeps their distance,” he said.
While no one displayed Proud Boy gear at the rally, one man led the crowd in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance while wearing a shirt with an “Iron Cross” on the back. The symbol, used for centuries in Germany, has a particular association with the Nazi regime as a military decoration.
The man, who declined to give his full name, defended the cross in an interview with the Herald and denied that he was wearing it because of its status as a Nazi icon.
“I’m free to wear whatever I want,” he said.
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