Sean Hannity wrapped up Thursday’s broadcast of his widely-watched Fox News show by very briefly talking about the shocking moment earlier this week when — live on the air — members of Curtis Sliwa’s Guardian Angels group attacked a man whom Sliwa wrongly identified as a migrant and a shoplifter.
Sliwa bragged about the man receiving “a little pain compliance” from his comrades in his interview with Hannity from Times Square in New York City.
“His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations,” boasted Sliwa, a failed Republican New York City mayoral candidate. “He is sucking concrete. The cops scraped him off the asphalt. He’s on his way to jail.”
Hannity, addressing the incident two days later in just 48 seconds, began: “Before we go tonight, I want to talk about Curtis Sliwa’s appearance on this show on Tuesday night, when members of the Guardian Angels stopped a man, and the police were called.”
Hannity continued, “Now, Curtis said that the man was a migrant and that he was shoplifting. Fox News has since spoken to the NYPD. Apparently, the statements made by Curtis that the man is a migrant is not true. And the man was given a summons for disorderly conduct.”
“Today, Curtis Sliwa acknowledged to The Washington Post that the man has not been charged with shoplifting,” Hannity added. “And Curtis said in part, ‘I shouldn’t have been listening to the crowd. That was my mistake. I should not have had that knee-jerk reaction.’”
Hannity, who frequently amplifies former President Donald Trump’s falsehoods on his show, then claimed that, “We always want to set the record straight.”
A New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press that the man was not a migrant and was actually from the Bronx. Nor was he a shoplifter.
“Officers were informed that the male had repeatedly attempted to interfere with and disrupt a live television interview,” the spokesperson told NBC News. The man was issued a summons for “acting in a loud, disorderly, threatening manner.”
Sliwa founded the viligante group in the 1970s. He has admitted some of its “early crime-fighting exploits were actually faked.” On X (formerly Twitter), he apologized for “miss (sic) characterizing the man’s citizenship status, misunderstanding what had caused Guardian Angels to step in” during the Fox News interview.
“No Guardian Angel, a majority minority organization, would ever have provoked an attack based on who someone is or where they came from,” he claimed.
Sliwa alleged the incident actually occurred when “three males provoked Angels and the film crew, with one become (sic) belligerent and emotional, aggressively pushing through the crew and the crowd.” He “ended up putting his hands” on one of the group’s female members, Sliwa added.
A representative from the New York Police Department told The Washington Post on Thursday that the incident is under investigation.
