A few weeks before voters go to the polls, incumbent U.S. Rep. Wesley Bell is now facing a lawsuit over how his security detail handled protestors after a town hall last year that started out raucous and only got more so.
That town hall at the former Post-Dispatch building downtown last August drew a mix of constituents wanting to hear what the congressman had to say, as well as protestors eager to give him a piece of their minds over his staunch support of Israel. The latter group quickly began shouting and singing, even as the emcee was introducing Bell. Among the accusations sung at Bell included that he loved killing children.
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Over the course of more than an hour, not all that many questions were asked or answered. Protestors outside the building beat drums. Protestors among the crowd inside turned away from the stage at times and at others hurled insults toward those standing on it. A performance of the national anthem did little to quiet the tension. One veteran political reporter at the event noted that she’d never seen anything quite like what was unfolding in front of her. At one point, the night’s emcee, Tracy Jackson, said to the protestors, “We can do this the educated way. Or we can roll the hood way.”
The lawsuit, filed today by attorney Jack Waldron, alleges that Bell’s security opted for the hood route.
Bell’s campaign called the lawsuit a distraction.
“Last August, Wesley Bell held a town-hall to engage with his constituents. Protestors engaged in behavior that security deemed to be a threat and repeatedly asked them to leave. This is another desperate attempt by Cori Bush’s failing campaign to distract voters in the last three weeks before the election. This lawsuit will be deemed frivolous, because that is exactly what it is,” Bell campaign spokeswoman Jordan Blase said of the lawsuit.
“In the meantime, Congressman Bell will continue to be the progressive champion that St. Louis needs, and I suspect Cori Bush will continue to only think about herself.”
After Bell left the stage at the August town hall, the lawsuit says the security hired for the evening “violently and aggressively” removed people from the room. One of the plaintiffs, Kelly Lu, says she was pinned against a wall and grabbed by the throat. Another, Jacob Berkowitz, alleges he was thrown to the ground. Lu and Berkowitz as well as two other plaintiffs, Maxi Glamour and Kaitlyn Killgo, say in the lawsuit they explicitly went to the townhall to protest. One of the plaintiffs, Killgo, was also arrested in April of this year for disrupting Mayor Cara Spencer’s state of the city address.
A fifth plaintiff, Christine Wilmes, says she was there simply as a constituent who then stepped in to try to protect protestors when everything went off the rails.
“I’d been calling Wesley Bell’s office for months to explicitly request a town hall—so when he finally announced he’d be hosting one, I signed up immediately,” Wilmes said in a press release issued when the suit was filed. “I attended alone with my notebook, ready to listen and ask questions. But when the event began with the emcee demanding that security forcibly remove a peaceful protester, I couldn’t simply sit by and watch.”
In addition to Bell, the lawsuit names two members of his security detail as well as five other members of that detail not identified in the suit. All are accused of assault and battery. The suit also accuses Bell of negligence.
The lawsuit’s filing is the latest twist in the rematch between Bell and former Congresswoman Cori Bush, whom Bell beat two years ago.
Bell continues to take heat for the amount of money he’s accepted from the pro-Israel lobbying group, AIPAC.
Bush hasn’t managed to skirt questions about her campaign’s funding, either.
Last week, KSDK’s political editor Mark Maxwell reported on Bush seeming to make use of a campaign finance loophole to pay herself and her husband Cortney Merritts five figure sums last year. A total of $18,000 passed through a leadership PAC founded by Bush to her Politivist Action PAC, which Bush had founded just a few weeks earlier (leadership PACs are generally used by politicians to raise money for their campaigns). Two days later, that second PAC began paying salaries to Bush and Merritts. The former congresswoman collected $14,500 over the year and Merritts, $11,000.
In an interview on CNN, Bell sought to cast Bush as likely to be the least popular person among Democratic primary voters. “We got a scam artist in the White House that’s enriching himself off the presidency,” he said. “You got a scam artist in this race who’s enriching herself off of her congressional run and being in Congress formerly.”
