This Shocking Moment at a GOP Town Hall in Idaho Is a Foreboding Sign
Teresa Borrenpohl later told the Coeur d'Alene Press that, as it happened, she didn't know if it was an arrest of 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, 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—Teresa Borrenpohl 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.'
When exactly LEAR began operating in Idaho is unclear—requests for comment sent to the security firm remained unanswered by publication time. Kootenai County's local Republican party has been dominated by MAGA Republicans in recent years. Militia and militia-like groups in the region had also found a foothold again, after years of residents confronting them, going back to efforts to run the Aryan Nations out of the area in the 1990s.
The town hall in Coeur d'Alene was not the first time Trouette and other LEAR security forces have been deployed against community activists. A few years back, they were working to surveil anti-logging tree sits and protests in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest in California. CAL FIRE said they LEAR was working as 'safety managers,' not private security. But local environment justice and indigenous groups reported that LEAR employees were instructing loggers on how to make 'citizens arrests' of protestors. In one incident outside a logging gate, according to local public radio outlet KZYX, about 20 minutes after Paul Trouette left the site, a 'large black truck with no license places' arrived and pulled alongside a Native Hawaiian activist and singer who was part of the effort to defend the site from logging. As a lawyer working with one of the groups wrote, 'They didn't say who they were, they didn't say we're with the police, or we're with Cal Fire. They just came up to her and said, you need to leave. And when she said that she wouldn't, they responded by reaching into their pocket and throwing bullet casings at her face and saying, you know, it's dangerous in here. And I think any reasonable person would feel that that was a death threat.' One of the men in the truck was reportedly wearing a Blue Lives Matter mask.
Only after the three men from LEAR dragged Teresa Borrenpohl into the hallway outside the auditorium on Saturday did Coeur d'Alene police arrive and intervene, at first seemingly unaware of who the LEAR guys were, asking if they were with the sheriff. According to the Coeur d'Alene Press, White 'said it's not appropriate for law enforcement to forcefully remove a person from a town hall for speaking out of turn or shouting.' White also told the Press that 'his officers declined the sheriff's request that Borrenpohl be arrested for trespassing.' (She was charged with misdemeanor battery for allegedly biting one of the men who grabbed her, but the charge was dismissed by the city attorney on Monday.)
Late on Monday, the Coeur d'Alene police announced that LEAR's license to operate in the city was now revoked due to the incident. Police also said that LEAR had been hired by the town hall organizers. Sheriff Norris has maintained that the firm's actions were proper. They are certainly in keeping with LEAR's history of policing protest while the agencies who hired them distance themselves from the private security they hired.
In the recent past, unfortunately, what the far right do in Idaho has been an indicator of what may be erupting elsewhere—whether that's masked militia groups patrolling Pride events, or violent white supremacists running for office. Under this Trump administration, it feels like a series of limits are being tested, and in this part of the country, the tests were already underway. A Unite the Right attendee already won an endorsement from the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee in 2021 (he lost). Sheriff Norris already went viral for hunting for 'explicit' books in a local library. Now, with the apparent blessing of the county sheriff, a group of men who would not identify themselves and who were working for the local Republican party have dragged someone out of a political meeting, her speech considered grounds for arrest. What's next? And who will stand in their way?
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