An Oregon state lawmaker, who was previously charged for allegedly letting protestors into the state’s closed state Capitol building, can be seen in a newly surfaced video giving protestors guidance on accessing the building.
Republican Rep. Mike Nearman is shown in the 78-minute video—which was reportedly streamed in December—giving an unidentified audience tips on setting up “Operation Hall Pass,” according to CNN.
In the video, which makes it unclear if he knew he was being recorded, Nearman tells his audience that there are ways to get access to the building outside of the COVID restrictions at the time. He also gives them his phone number so they could presumably contact him so that he could let them into the building, CNN confirmed.
“We are talking about setting up Operation Hall Pass, which I don’t know anything about; and if you accuse me of knowing something about it, I’ll deny it,” he says. “But there would be some person’s cell phone which might be … but that is just random numbers that I spewed out; that’s not anybody’s actual cell phone. And if you say, ‘I’m at the west entrance’ during the session and text to that number there, that somebody might exit that door while you’re standing there. But I don’t know anything about that, I don’t have anything to do with that, and if I did I wouldn’t say that I did.”
At one point, Nearman asks if it would be better to show up to the Capitol during the week or on the weekends “because I notice a lot of rallies and things like that happen on the weekends when no one is working.”
After the December incident, Nearman was charged with first-degree official misconduct and second-degree criminal trespass, court records show.
