Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana helped Capitol Police forcibly remove a protester who shouted “No one wants to fight for Israel” during a Senate hearing Wednesday afternoon.
The protester, Brian McGinnis, a Marine veteran running as a Green Party candidate in North Carolina’s Senate race, disrupted a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on military readiness, standing and shouting, “America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel.”
Sheehy, a former Navy SEAL officer who has previously expressed his support for the United States backing Israel in conflict, is seen in a video of the altercation rushing to help police remove McGinnis, who later claimed that his arm was broken during the confrontation on social media.
“Wednesday afternoon, an unruly man who started to illegally protest during a hearing put everyone in a dangerous position by violently resisting and fighting our officer’s attempts to remove him from the room,” the US Capitol Police said in a statement. “Protests are not allowed inside the Congressional Buildings. There are plenty of other spots on Capitol Grounds, outside, where demonstrations are allowed.”
Three officers sustained injuries during the incident, as did McGinnis, who is facing three charges for assaulting a police officer and three counts related to his attempts to resist arrest, according to the US Capitol Police.
“Capitol Police were attempting to remove an unhinged protestor from the Armed Services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and de-escalate the situation,” Sheehy wrote in a post on X. “This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one. I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence.”
The incident comes days after the United States and Israel jointly struck Iran in a sweeping military operation that has since triggered retaliatory attacks and a rapidly widening regional conflict. While both President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have denied claims that Israel steered the United States into entering the conflict, critics across the political spectrum have claimed Israel pushed the United States into the strikes.
“You are a disgusting human being and traitor to America,” wrote antisemitic streamer Nick Fuentes, who has strongly opposed the strikes on Iran, in a post on X replying to Sheehy’s statement. “Hope Israel sees what a good bitch you are and rewards you.”
Pro-Palestinian advocacy on social media
McGinnis is married to a Palestinian woman who has posted anti-Israel content online and has a record of pro-Palestinian advocacy on his social media pages, including posts where he has referred to Israel as a “murderous ethnic cleansing force” and donned a keffiyeh, the traditional Palestinian headscarf, while defending the movement.
“There’s no good faith in Israel; they have killed innocent people in their pursuit of stealing land, so this is not someone you negotiate with,” McGinnis said on Instagram last month. “This is a force that’s unstoppable, and they’re using American tax dollars, using the American military to accomplish their task, and it’s killing my family, it’s terrorizing my family.” (McGinnis said in the video that his wife owns a home in the West Bank.)
On Saturday, McGinnis posted a video of himself claiming that the conflict in Iran was the “work of Israel, to get us to fight them … so Israel can proliferate its land and spread its borders.”