Private, unidentified security personnel dragged a woman out of the event. It raises questions not just about tolerance for dissent, but als
Melissa Gira Grant at The New Republic:
Teresa Borrenpohl later told the Coeur d’Alene Press that, as it happened, she didn’t know if it was an arrest or a kidnapping. She was seated in a nearly-full town hall hosted by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee on Saturday. At first, the scene was similar to those that have played out over the last week or so, with opponents of the Trump and Musk takeover showing up to tell their lawmakers to show some spine, even in deeply conservative counties. But then, when a group of unmarked security descended on Borrenpohl, the conflict at the town hall took a more terrifying turn.
A member of the panel was giving an anti-abortion talking point when a voice from the audience talked over him, saying “Women are dying.” The panel member continued. The moderator, a local website developer named Ed Bejarana, interrupted to lecture audience members who he said were “just popping off with stupid remarks,” and Teresa Borrenpohl yelled back, “Is this a town hall or a lecture?” Bejerma continued: “You’re just crazy people.”
Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris by then was standing over Borrenpohl. He was in plainclothes and she didn’t recognize him at first. “Get ‘em out!” Bejarana exclaimed, to boos and applause. Sheriff Norris told Borrenpohl to get up or be arrested. He leaned over to a woman next to her, recording the scene on a phone, and said she would also be removed. Borrenpohl was likely recognized by at least some in the room as a former Democratic candidate for office, but she said she didn’t know why she was in trouble. She stayed in her seat. “That little girl is afraid to leave!” Bejarana called from the stage. “She spoke up and now she doesn’t want to suffer the consequences.”
A man dressed in a black jacket, olive pants, and an earbud or earpiece stepped into the row and grabbed Borrenpohl’s wrist. She yanked it back. He went for her hands again. She pointed at the man looming over her, yelling out, “this man is assaulting me.” The man stepped further into the aisle, joined be a second in identical attire. “Is this your deputy?” she yelled. “Sheriff Norris, is this your deputy?” If the men were working for the sheriff, they weren’t showing any insignia. Their faces were blank. “Who the fuck are these men?” Borrenpohl yelled again. As the two men grappled her, some in the audience began to cheer, while others took up the woman’s demand that the men identify themselves. A third man in the same jacket and pants arrived, holding a bunch of plastic zipcuffs. They got Teresa Borrenpohl on her stomach, kneeling over her. Then they dragged her out of the room.
In the past week, with Congress in recess, Republican lawmakers across the country have faced hostile town halls, where constituents dissatisfied with the Trump/Musk chaos in the federal government boo, chant, and interrupt. Some Democrats have been facing pressure from their own. “Tyranny is rising in the White House, and a man has declared himself our king,” one audience voter challenged his representative at a town hall in Georgia days before. “So, I would like to know rather, the people would like to know, what you, congressman, and your fellow congressmen are going to do to rein in the megalomaniac in the White House?” Like the rolling pickets outside Tesla showrooms in recent weeks, these actions have at times been intentionally disruptive, meant not merely as protest but to interrupt business as usual. What was done to Borrenpohl in Coeur d’Alene for speaking out at a town hall is a terrifying escalation. In Idaho, the lines between Republican politics and political violence are thinner than they are in some places, but there’s no reason to believe this escalation won’t be repeated.
Who were the men who accosted Teresa Borrenpohl, and what was the local sheriff doing with them? Much remains murky—LEAR did not respond to a request for comment for this piece—but the Coeur d’Alene Press has found some answers. The unmarked security force were from a private security firm called LEAR Asset Management, the Press reported, but Sheriff Norris “claimed no knowledge of the security personnel or who hired them.” The man who founded and runs the group is Paul Trouette, who was seen in Coeur d’Alene several months ago at a city council meeting, opposing a local ordinance that would have required private security outfits more clearly identify themselves. At the time, the Kootenai Journal reported, Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White “made references to situations in which security personnel were confused with law enforcement officers, or acted as if they were law enforcement officers, within the last year in Coeur d’Alene.”
LEAR has operated in California going back at least to 2012, with Trouette running what “looks like a military assault force,” as Time magazine observed in 2014. “Clad in body armor and camouflage and carrying AR-15 rifles, they creep through the trees toward their target: one of the illegal marijuana gardens dotting Mendocino County.” More recently, LEAR seems to have turned up pro bono and perhaps uninvited to clear an encampment where unhoused people were living near Ackman Creek in Mendocino County. After a local news outlet reported on Paul Trouette doing security at the clean-up, a county agency involved in the effort said “it is unclear to us who contacted Lear.”
At a GOP town hall organized by the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee this past weekend in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Teresa Borrenpohl was unlawfully dragged out of the meeting by private security for speaking out against the diabolically un-American agenda of DOGE and MAGA.
