Yahoo News reports:
Police officers had to intervene during a Sunday afternoon town hall hosted by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), after a fight broke out between her backers and supporters of former President Donald Trump.
As she spoke, a handful of Trump supporters began loudly interrupting her, the Los Angeles Times reports, shouting and calling her “Corrupt Katie Porter” and “Carpetbagger Katie.” In response, there were chants of “Katie! Katie! Katie!”
When several of the Porter supporters walked over to the protesters and confronted them, it sparked a fight, and punches were thrown, the Times reports. Porter ran over and put her arms around an elderly woman who was close to the scuffle, and officers from the Irvine Police Department quickly separated both sides.
Most of the tweets below are from a 2020 protest led by the man who led yesterday’s incident.
Fight breaks out in Irvine at Katie Porter’s town hall. The man in the suit with the blue “America First” hat is Nicholas A. Taurus of Laguna Hills.
Nick Taurus has a history of violent attacks on women and the eldery, including Yorba Linda on 26-Sep and Newport Beach on 18-Oct. https://t.co/vMxSp0ns4q pic.twitter.com/ZyuhOlIWY6
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 11, 2021
Richard Williams, 70, of Irvine is grabbed and shoved by Nicholas A. Tairus, as he tried to hold his Biden-Harris sign amid a sea of Trump supporters yesterday in Newport Beach.
(? @GinaFerazzi / Los Angeles Times, Oct 18th) pic.twitter.com/wFl4HFJS0a
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 11, 2021
Nicholas Taurus assaults an older man, grabs his sign and rips it up, then tries to slap the camera out of a female journalist’s hands.
(? @waterspider__ Yorba Linda, 26-Sep-2020) pic.twitter.com/2yyxw4dFKY
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 11, 2021
Nicholas Taurus tries to kick a man in the face while attempting to steal another sign.
(? @waterspider__ / Yorba Linda, 26-Sep-2020) pic.twitter.com/oSaBwBjsgq
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 11, 2021
Nicholas Taurus attacks an elderly woman while attempting to steal her sign, gets called out for it, and then continues to attack other sign-holder.
(?@chip_nooo / Yorba Linda, 26-Sep-2020) pic.twitter.com/JpewHvbCPS
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 11, 2021
Nicholas Taurus leads a far-right crowd shouting “F*ck that b*tch” in response to racial justice protesters chanting Breonna Taylor’s name.
(?@chip_nooo / Yorba Linda, 26-Sep-2020) pic.twitter.com/qm1kAwV9ZQ
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 11, 2021
Nicholas Taurus, a violent right-wing extremist from Laguna Hills, CA, announced that he’s running for office against Katie Porter for CA45.
Here is Taurus posing with Nick J. Fuentes, the white supremacist head of the racist Groyper movement, in a photo dated 30-Jun-2020. pic.twitter.com/Tdc8gSdIyu
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 11, 2021
Nicholas Taurus and his father, Marcae Andrew Taurus, have been active on the far-right in Southern California for several years.
Nick and his father Marcae led a racist, Islamophobic rally at Orange Coast College on 30-Apr-2017. https://t.co/YiDTNHn96o pic.twitter.com/4EzcAnZxoj
— Chad Loder (@chadloder) July 12, 2021