Armstrong disputes affidavit, calls church protest peaceful (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The organizer of that Minneapolis church protest just got out of jail, and Nekima Levy Armstrong spoke exclusively to me about what happened and about her arrest. And then she also talked to me about that fake photo of her. You remember the one of her crying that the White House put out? You say in your video, I don't want to be a trophy for MAGA.

[00:00:20] Speaker 2: Why is he recording this? I would ask that you not record. If it doesn't have to be, I don't want to be a trophy for MAGA. Oh, it's not going to be on Twitter. It's not going to be on anything like that. We're not going to, we're not going to. It's still weird that she would record me.

[00:00:33] Speaker 1: That video that we're looking at, it confirms what your attorney said, and by the way, what the DHS secretary posted, which is you looking very calm and stoic, okay, during your arrest. She posted an image of you. You looked very serious and calm. But then the White House posted a digitally altered image, and it showed you looking bereft and crying and very broken up.

[00:00:54] Speaker 2: At the time when I questioned the FBI agent about why he was recording, he had a smirk on his face, right? He knew that this was a sham prosecution to begin with. I could tell, honestly, by the look in his eyes. And I said, you can't, you know, later I said, you can't even look at me with a straight face, you know, about this whole thing. And so when I asked him about recording, he said, oh, it's not going to go on Twitter or anything. I was just asked to record this video.

[00:01:20] Speaker 1: I wanted to read for you what they've just put out. We've just gotten this. It says that your church protests, quote, disrupted the religious service and intimidated, harassed, oppressed, and terrorized the parishioners, including young children, and caused the service to be cut short. It goes on to describe a conversation that they said you had before the protests where they said that you specifically said, Nakima, to others, remember, if you have anything that is activist identifying, do not wear it in if you're just going in to sit down and be a part of the situation. I wanted to give you a chance to respond to this affidavit.

[00:01:55] Speaker 2: I said what I said. We went into the church service. Anyone who saw the video saw that we were very peaceful. And the description that they gave with regard to churchgoers, that, to me, sounds like what ICE is actually doing in our community, terrorizing adults and children, making them fearful, disrupting their lives. That's what ICE is doing. That's not what we did.