The video, posted on the social media platform X on Sunday evening, showed Sortor questioning Ocasio-Cortez about the effects of the southern border crisis on her district, while her staff appeared to physically block his path and the lawmaker implied that he had touched her on the staircase.
“Your district is really suffering under the pressure of the border crisis,” Sortor said. “Are you talking to the Biden administration about fixing the border?”
Sortor tried to repeat the question as staffers positioned themselves between him and the lawmaker, but the journalist evaded them and eventually repositioned himself behind Ocasio-Cortez.
Towards the end of the video, the representative repeatedly said, “Sir, don’t touch me,” yet Sortor said he never laid hands on her.
“I did not touch you. I have it on video,” he remarked at the end of the tense exchange.
Sortor claimed in an X post written alongside the video that Ocasio-Cortez contacted the United States Capitol Police following the incident.
“I confronted AOC at the Capitol over her refusal to condemn the Biden Migrant Crisis, which led to a migrant setting an innocent woman on fire today,” Sortor wrote.
“She responded by falsely accusing me of assault, and even got the Capitol Police involved, who agreed I never touched her,” he added.
“AOC is one of the WORST members of Congress, and her lack of action is costing the lives of innocent New Yorkers.”
Sortor also wrote that Ocasio-Cortez “blamed DANIEL PENNY for subways being unsafe” as she “encourages even MORE unvetted migrants to pour across the border.”
Ocasio-Cortez indeed appeared to blame Penny, who was acquitted earlier this month of the death of irate homeless man Jordan Neely in a New York City subway car, over the incident.
“The point of our justice system is a level of accountability to prevent a person who does not have remorse about taking another person’s life,” she said in a video recorded last year, which recirculated after the acquittal, according to the New York Post.“The fact that a person has expressed no remorse indicates a risk that it may happen again,” Ocasio-Cortez said of Penny. “And if we do not want to unleash that level of violence then we should exert a level of accountability to prevent that from happening.”
The renewed discussion of violent incidents on New York City mass transit comes after an illegal immigrant from Guatemala allegedly lit a woman on fire Sunday aboard a subway car.
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