The St. Louis lawyer seen aiming a gun at peaceful protesters with his wife in a viral video shared by President Donald Trump told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that he feared the "mob" would "kill" them.
Mark McCloskey, seen in the now-viral video with wife and law partner Patricia McCloskey aiming an assault-style rifle and handgun at protesters in front of their $1 million palatial home, was joined by his attorney for the interview on "Tucker Carlson Tonight."
"They're angry. They're screaming. They've got spittle coming out of their mouth, and they're coming toward the house," McCloskey said. "When I saw that mob come through the gate with their rage and their anger, I thought that we would be overrun in a second. By the time I was out there with my rifle, the people were 20 or 30 feet from my front wall."
McCloskey previously asserted in interviews that the group of protesters had smashed the gate to his private street, a claim which was swiftly debunked by local news outlets.
The protesters were marching toward the St. Louis mayor's home after she doxxed activists who called to defund the police. However, McCloskey said he believed that he himself would be murdered.
He told Carlson that he was "literally afraid that within seconds, they would surmount the wall come into the house, kill us, burn the house down and everything that I had worked for and struggled for for the last 32 years."
But there have not been any reports of any protesters coming into anyone's home, killing them and setting it on fire. There have been numerous online hoaxes threatening that "antifa" members were going to residential areas to attack homeowners, which were boosted by Republicans like Donald Trump Jr., that drew armed responses from residents in small towns in Arkansas and Idaho.
McCloskey, who pointed his gun at a group of protesters who appeared to be mostly Black, denied that he was racist.
"I've spent my career defending people that are defenseless," he told Carlson. "For people that are having a hard time making their miracle happen. For people that don't have a voice. My Black clients love us. The night that this happened, I had some of our Black clients calling us up till 2:30 in the morning telling us how wrong it was the way the press is writing this up."
McCloskey said the incident "had nothing to do with race" and calling the couple racist was "ridiculous."
"I wasn't worried what the race was of the mob that came through my gate. I was worried that I was going to be killed," he added. "I didn't care what race they were."
St. Louis prosecutor Kimberly Gardner said she was "alarmed" by the incident, "where peaceful protestors were met by guns and a violent assault."
"We must protect the right to peacefully protest. Any attempt to chill it through intimidation or threat of deadly force will not be tolerated," she said. "Make no mistake: We will not tolerate the use of force against those exercising their First Amendment rights and will use the full power of Missouri law to hold people accountable."
Watch McCloskey's full interview with Carlson below:
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