{"id":7784,"date":"2026-03-07T07:03:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T07:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/7784\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T07:03:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T07:03:40","slug":"marine-vet-whose-arm-was-broken-when-senator-tossed-him-from-iran-war-briefing-got-in-a-little-too-deep-says-mom-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/7784\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine vet whose arm was broken when senator tossed him from Iran war briefing \u2018got in a little too deep,\u2019 says mom"},"content":{"rendered":"

As of 9 a.m. Thursday, Brian McGinnis<\/a>\u2019s mom hadn\u2019t yet been able to bring herself to watch the video of her son\u2019s arm being audibly broken<\/a> the previous afternoon by a sitting U.S. senator, but said she was fully aware of the details.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know where he got the idea to do it,\u201d Mary Lou McGinnis told The Independent. \u201cHe\u2019s married to a Palestinian woman, he talks a lot about her family and Israel. I think that probably played into his thinking\u2026 Certain subjects, I guess he\u2019s gotten kind of riled up about. Gaza, his wife\u2019s family and all, he has strong feelings.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the 44-year-old Iraq War veteran and working firefighter \u2013 himself a Senate candidate<\/a> for the Green Party<\/a> \u2013 interrupted a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee hearing, while wearing his Marine Corps dress blues, to condemn the joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes on Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel!\u201d McGinnis shouted.<\/p>\n

As a trio of Capitol Police officers tried to remove McGinnis from the chamber, his left arm became wedged in the door frame. After Sen. Tim Sheehy<\/a>, a Montana Republican and former Navy SEAL, joined the fracas and grabbed at McGinnis\u2019s arm, a loud snap could be heard on now-viral footage that circulated widely after the incident.<\/p>\n

\"Marine<\/p>\n

Marine Corps veteran Brian McGinnis, had his arm broken by a sitting U.S. senator while being ejected from a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. His mother says he began to question things after deploying to Iraq during his service in the early 2000s (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

McGinnis was hospitalized, and is now facing charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and unlawful demonstration.<\/p>\n

Speaking from her home in Quincy, Illinois, McGinnis\u2019s mother expressed deep concern for her \u201cwonderful boy,\u201d and worried that his arrest might land the father of four \u201cin trouble\u201d with his bosses at the Raleigh Fire Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has four young children, so he needs to be home helping \u2013 which he is, most of the time,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great dad, he was class president in high school. Just a wonderful person to be around, but in this case, he got in a little too deep, it sounds like.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from his late father, a doctor who served a four-year stint in the Navy during Vietnam<\/a>, McGinnis is not from a military family, according to Mary Lou.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrian just got the bug,\u201d she said. \u201cHis buddies were heading off for college, and he talked to a recruiter and we said, \u2018Ok, go ahead.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

On his campaign website<\/a>, McGinnis says he graduated from high school \u201con a Saturday in early June 2000, and went to Marine boot camp the following Monday. Mama was not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n

He made the All-Marine boxing team in 2003 and deployed to Iraq as a Light Armored Vehicle Crewman that same year.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.<\/p>\n

Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Montana Republican and former Navy SEAL, is seen at left, shortly before protester McGinnis had his arm broken while being escorted out of a Senate Armed Services Subcommittee hearing on Wednesday (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

However, the more time McGinnis spent in the Middle East<\/a>, the more he began to examine his own beliefs and feelings about the politics of the region, according to Mary Lou.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he was in Iraq, he started sort of wondering,\u201d she told The Independent. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t quite sure what he was doing there, and he had questions about all that. After the war, he came home and met a gal with Palestinian background.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGinnis and his wife, Hamadee, had \u201cfour kids in four years, practically,\u201d Mary Lou went on, calling him \u201ca wonderful father, wonderful husband, wonderful son.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGinnis has since been vocal about his solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and in 2024 made local headlines<\/a> when he helped bring aid into Gaza<\/a> with a volunteer group called the \u201cFreedom Flotilla Coalition.\u201d Hamadee described herself at the time to CBS affiliate WNCN as the \u201cmore relaxed\u201d of the two.<\/p>\n

Public records show McGinnis is a registered Republican<\/a>, but his campaign site shows little love for either major party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a Green because I know capitalist parties will never actually serve working class people,\u201d the site\u2019s \u201cAbout Me\u201d section says. \u201cThe Democrats and Republicans may market to working class people but when push comes to shove they will both fail working class people time and time again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Sheehy,<\/p>\n

Sheehy, a Montana Republican and former Navy SEAL, leaves the Senate chamber after he and members of the Capitol Police forcibly removed Iraq War McGinnis (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

McGinnis has not made any public comments about his arrest, although a GoFundMe campaign launched Thursday morning<\/a> by his wife\u2019s cousin said he remained hospitalized.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Brian stood up to speak inside the United States Capitol, he was exercising one of the most basic rights Americans are supposed to have. The right to speak. The right to question power. The right to be heard,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n

In a statement issued in the aftermath, the Capitol Police<\/a> called McGinnis \u201can unruly man who started to illegally protest during a hearing,\u201d and claimed he \u201cput everyone in a dangerous position by violently resisting and fighting our officer\u2019s attempts to remove him from the room.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sheehy, for his part, later took to social media and claimed he had been trying to \u201cde-escalate the situation,\u201d calling McGinnis an \u201cunhinged protester\u201d who was \u201cfighting back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one,\u201d Sheehy posted on X<\/a>. \u201cI hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Mary Lou McGinnis was heartened to hear that her son appeared to be enjoying significant public support and that the GoFundMe appeal had already raised nearly $65,000 of its $70,000 goal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m crazy about him,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s wonderful to me, he\u2019s made lots of plane trips home. He\u2019s a loving, caring person, not a fighter in any way, except I guess in the service. So that kind of sums it up\u2026 He really is a wonderful guy\u2026 He\u2019s just kind of out there sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As of 9 a.m. Thursday, Brian McGinnis\u2019s mom hadn\u2019t yet been able to bring herself to watch the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7785,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[94,4773,4771,4769,4770,4772,4774,4775,4768],"class_list":["post-7784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-iraq","tag-iraq-war-veteran","tag-marine-corps-dress-blues","tag-mary-lou","tag-mary-lou-mcginnis","tag-montana-republican","tag-navy-seal","tag-senate-armed-services","tag-tim-sheehy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116186618417663255","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}