Gabriel Garcia believed Christopher Monzon, the Republican Party canvasser who said he was beaten up in Hialeah last month because of his political beliefs.
So much that Garcia — a former Proud Boy facing a federal trial for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — helped organize a rally in Monzon’s support and stood guard outside his hospital room.
But after watching new videos of the moments before two men attacked Monzon, Garcia now says he thinks the canvasser is lying about being the victim of a leftist attack — and that Sen. Marco Rubio, who turned the incident into a national news story with a provocative tweet, used the fight for his political advantage.
“After seeing the new evidence and video, this was not politically motivated and Chris took advantage of the situation,” said Garcia, who serves on the Miami-Dade County Republican Party’s Executive Committee. “I hope he goes to jail for lying to the detective on his BS story and same with little Marco for taking advantage of this situation for political gains.”
Other rally organizers told the Miami Herald that the videos, which do not show the two men who attacked Monzon making anti-Republican comments, have also led them to doubt Monzon’s credibility.
In addition to the videos, the organizers’ change of heart came after Monzon sought to disassociate himself from the Proud Boys at a Monday court hearing, saying he knew nothing about the rally and was unconscious when they were guarding his hospital room the day after the beatdown.
“Not only am I not a Proud Boy but I want nothing to do with the Proud Boys,” Monzon told reporters after the hearing. “I did not approve the event that they orchestrated on my behalf.”
His disavowal led a local chapter of the Proud Boys to attack Monzon, a former white nationalist, on the social media site Telegram.
“People always want the Proud Boys’ help when in need,” the post from the Vice City Proud Boys said. “When PBs are no longer needed they throw us away like yesterday’s newspaper. Chris Monzon threw us under the bus.”
The new videos show Monzon’s alleged attackers, Jonathan Alexander Casanova and Javier Lopez, jawing with him as he passed out GOP fliers in a Hialeah residential neighborhood on Oct. 23. While Casanova commented on Monzon’s Rubio T-shirt, he also seemed to be trying to de-escalate the situation and did not say he had a problem with Republicans, instead telling the canvasser: “It’s OK, bro, we’re telling you, do your job. Go do your job.”
Both Casanova and Lopez have been charged with aggravated battery, as well as assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly siccing two dogs on the canvasser. Monzon, who was left with serious injuries to his face and one eye, testified at the Monday court hearing for Lopez that the assault had been motivated by politics. But both Lopez’s defense attorney and a state prosecutor cast doubt on that assertion.
Until now, Garcia had been a vocal supporter of Monzon. He and other past and present members of the Proud Boys — a far-right group whose top leaders have been charged with seditious conspiracy in the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol — helped organize a rally in Hialeah on Oct. 29 supporting Monzon and protesting political violence. At the rally, Monzon’s father, Rey Cedeno, addressed attendees over the phone, saying that the attack was “an animalistic, cowardly act” and that he and his son would have attended but had to go to a doctor’s appointment instead.
Monzon himself later made brief comments from the passenger seat of a car as rally-goers protested outside Lopez’s house. Garcia and other Proud Boys also stood guard at Monzon’s hospital room the day after the beating, preventing media and other unwelcome visitors from coming in.
But at Monday’s court hearing, Monzon seemed to distance himself from any association with the Proud Boys. When a defense attorney questioned him about the Proud Boys at his hospital room, he replied: “I plead the Fifth on the grounds I was not conscious at the time.”
And when reporters asked him after the hearing about attending the rally, he said that he was not a Proud Boy and said he dropped by only because he was on his way to vote at a nearby Hialeah library.
Monzon, who declined to comment for this story, is a former member of the white supremacist group the League of the South. He attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 but says he has disavowed his past views.
Rubio — who resoundingly won reelection Tuesday over Rep. Val Demings — has repeatedly doubled down in saying that the attack on Monzon was political. The senator has not responded to questions from the Miami Herald for several days, including about the new videos that cast doubt on Monzon’s version of events and statements from his father questioning whether the assailants were motivated by politics.
Monzon did not tell police at the scene that the attack was political, according to the original police report and body-camera footage. But the next day Hialeah police detectives re-interviewed him at the hospital. During the second interview, which happened hours after Rubio’s tweet, Monzon told police that one of his assailants said “he could not pass through because he was a Republican.”
Garcia said he was in Monzon’s hospital room and heard that interview. But none of what Monzon told detectives was backed up in the cellphone videos, which Garcia happened to see on Instagram Monday night, he said.
“I am a Republican but if something is wrong, I’m going to tell it like it is,” he said.
Gabriel Carrera, another organizer of the protest, was also troubled by the videos.
“Now that I see the new cellphone videos of Chris just moments prior to the alleged political attack — I do not know what to believe,” Carrera, who associates with members of the Proud Boys but has never acknowledged belonging to the organization, said in a statement. “I wish him the best as I sit back to see how this unfortunate story plays out in the end.”
Carrera and Garcia said that Monzon supported the rally — and criticized him for claiming he didn’t.
“That was another lie from his side,” Garcia said.
Chris Barcenas, who also organized the rally and is another former Proud Boy turned Miami-Dade GOP committee member, said the videos showed Monzon could have walked away from the fight.
Barcenas watched the videos Tuesday evening at a polling place in Coral Gables, where he was working as an official poll worker.
“It seemed that Chris let his pride and emotions get the best of him by not walking away when he had the chance,” he said. “The guy did mention the Marco Rubio T-shirt but it wasn’t blatantly political.”
He also said that he believes Monzon, who ran and lost badly for Hialeah City Council last year, is growing more mindful of his reputation, including being cautious about links with groups like the Proud Boys.
“I know he wanted to get away from any groups that he thought might portray him in a bad light,” Barcenas said.
Miami Herald staff writer David Ovalle contributed to this report.
This story was originally published November 09, 2022 8:53 AM.
