Police said Wednesday they went to the scene of a protest outside of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s Huntington Beach office but made no arrests, and the Republican congressman says a member of his staff was injured.
Rohrabacher said he was outraged by an “assault” on his district director, 71-year-old Kathleen Staunton, who was hospitalized Tuesday after she was knocked unconscious by a swinging door amid the protest early Tuesday afternoon.
Staunton attempted to exit through the front door of Rohrabacher’s office to visit a restroom when, according to Rohrabacher, a protester yanked the door open, causing her to fall and hit her head. The door also pushed over a 2-year-old child who was apparently brought along with the crowd, but she was uninjured, the congressman said.
Staunton, who has managed Rohrabacher’s office since his first term in 1989, was treated by paramedics and taken to a local hospital, according to the congressman.
The protesters were part of a nationwide movement calling itself “Indivisible” and pledged to resist President Donald Trump’s agenda, Rohrabacher said. He said the group came to demand a town hall meeting with him even though he was working in Washington D.C. with the House of Representatives in session.
“I am outraged beyond words that protesters who mobbed my Huntington Beach office violently knocked down my faithful district director, Kathleen Staunton, causing her to be hospitalized,” Rohrabacher said in a statement. “And, yes, deliberate or not, the incident came as part of a mob action that not only intimidates but coerces. Though the protesters think of themselves as idealists, they engaged in political thuggery, pure and simple.”
—City News Service