Gun-toting St. Louis lawyer Mark McCloskey announces run for Senate
St. Louis lawyer Mark McCloskey, who made national headlines last year when he and his wife drew their guns and confronted Black Lives Matter protesters outside their home, is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican.
“I’ve always been a Republican, but I’ve never been a politician,” McCloskey said on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Tuesday. “God came knocking on my door last summer disguised as an angry mob.”
On June 28, McCloskey and his wife Patricia brandished an assault rifle and a handgun, respectively, at protesters as they marched past the McCloskeys’ home. Video of the viral incident drew the attention of then-President Donald Trump, and Mark McCloskey was invited to speak at last year’s Republican National Convention.
“When the mob came to destroy my house and kill my family, I took a stand against them,” McCloskey says in his campaign announcement video. “Now, I’m asking for the privilege to take that stand for all of us.”
“What I’ve learned is that people out there in this country are just sick and tired of cancel culture, and the poison of critical race theory and the big lie of systemic racism, all backed up by the threat of mob violence,” McCloskey told host Tucker Carlson. “People are just sick of it. They don’t want any more poseurs and egotists and career politicians going to DC. All we hear is talk, and nothing ever changes.”
McCloskey went on to accused President Biden and his Democratic allies of what he called the “wholesale slaughter of our civil liberties and wholesale institution of what cannot be called anything but socialism.”
The McCloskeys were indicted in October of last year on charges of unlawful use of a weapon and evidence tampering in connection with the incident. In December, a judge pulled St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and her office off the case after Gardner mentioned it in a political fundraising email. In February, former federal prosecutor Richard Callahan was appointed as a special prosecutor in the case.
Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson has already pledged to pardon the McCloskeys if they are convicted of any criminal offenses.
McCloskey is joining a crowded race to replace two-term Republican Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.). His competitors in the Republican field include scandal-scarred former Gov. Eric Greitens and state Attorney General Eric Schmitt.
