NEW YORK (PNN) - November 5, 2019 - Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) was forced to apologize Monday for blocking a former Brooklyn elected official from her Twitter account after he was critical of her.
Ocasio-Cortez was due to testify in a federal court in Brooklyn on Tuesday as part of a high-profile lawsuit that she violated a man’s First Amendment right. She chickened out and settled instead of appearing in court.
In her statement, the Democrat said she was wrong for silencing conservatives, a part of the settlement for a lawsuit conservative Jewish leader Dov Hikind had brought against her this summer.
“Mr. Hikind has a First Amendment right to express his views and should not be blocked for them,” she said.
“In retrospect, it was wrong and improper and does not reflect the values I cherish,” her statement read. “I sincerely apologize for blocking Mr. Hikind.”
Hikind, a former New York state Assemblyman, said he was blocked from Ocasio-Cortez’s @AOC campaign twitter account, which has 5.7 million followers, after he criticized her comments comparing border detention camps to concentration camps.
Hikind is a prominent Jewish leader in the state, and sued Ocasio-Cortez for silencing his First Amendment rights to free speech.
Hikind said he was pleased with the representative’s comments.
“She never apologizes,” Hikind said at a press conference on Monday. “So this is rather remarkable that she sincerely apologizes for blocking me. This is a great moment. I hope that more good can come out of this. I couldn’t ask for much more at this point,” he said.
“I knew that I never harassed her, because that’s not what I do,” Hikind said. “I just have a different point of view.”
He said he hoped the settlement and apology would be the beginning of a dialogue between himself and Ocasio-Cortez.
Hikind invited the far-Left congressman to join the Jewish community for a talk about the horrors of the Holocaust. He asked her to meet with survivors who saw family members forced into gas chambers and those who were tortured in Nazi-run concentration camps.
“Let the survivors share with her what a concentration camp means to a survivor of the Holocaust,” Hikind said.
Ocasio-Cortez has not accepted his invitation.
Hikind had filed his lawsuit on First Amendment grounds this year. It came after a federal appeals panel had said Fascist Police States of Amerika President Donald Trump couldn’t block people who criticized him from his Twitter account.