A group of conservative protesters gathered at New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s house Saturday to protest COVID-19 restrictions and spread far-fetched conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
A video posted by former state Senate candidate David Winkler showed dozens of people gathered near Murphy’s Middletown home, prevented from continuing down the street by police officers.
Winkler’s videos show very few of the protesters wearing masks, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends to stop the spread of COVID-19.
“This has nothing to do with [President-Elect Joe] Biden, this has to do with unconstitutional emergency orders that have killed our economy,” Winkler said in the video. “We’ve got Proud Boys here, we’ve got Trump supporters here, we’ve got everybody here.”
Since March, New Jersey has reported over 330,000 cases of COVID-19, the 14th most in the United States, including 3,924 new cases on Saturday.
More than 15,000 New Jerseyans have died from complications of COVID-19.
Nationwide, more than 13.2 million cases have been reported, including more than 265,000 deaths attributed to the virus.
Despite Winkler insisting the event not being about Biden, many of the protesters could be seen waving campaign flags for President Donald Trump — who lost to Biden in his reelection bid — and, in one case, a cut-out of Biden’s face.
According to a flyer, the event was also organized as as “stop the steal” event, using a catchphrase popularized by Trump supporters who falsely claim that Biden won the presidential race only because of an intricate voter fraud conspiracy perpetrated by the Biden campaign, election officials in key swing states and media outlets — none of which is true.
Trump campaign lawsuits arguing those baseless claims have been almost unanimously tossed out of the courts where they were filed.
“Calling an election unfair does not make it so,” wrote Judge Stephanos Bibas in the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which on Friday dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”
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