Charges against the Gold Star father who interrupted President Joe Biden's State of the Union address have been dropped, Fox News reported. Steve Nikoui, whose son Kareem Nikoui was killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan, was charged with disrupting Congress.
The news outlet received exclusive confirmation Tuesday that D.C. Attorney General Brain Schwalb decided not to prosecute the grieving father. Schwalb's office said this decision mirrored that of other protesters.
Steve Nikoui attended the March 7 speech as the guest of Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL). During Biden's address, the Marine's father shouted "Abbey Gate" and was removed and arrested by U.S. Capitol Police.
When Steve Nikoui shouted "Abbey Gate," he was referring to the entrance to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. It was the site of a suicide bombing that killed his son and 12 others, as well as more than a hundred Afghans, Fox News reported.
The bloodbath occurred on August 26, 2021, after Biden ordered the U.S. service members to evacuate the country. People like Kareem Nikoui lost their lives as a direct result of Biden's hastily executed plan.
After two decades of American lives and taxpayer money spent in Afghanistan, the nation returned to the hands of the Taliban. Former President Donald Trump criticized Biden for what he called "a total surrender" as he saw what was coming, Reuters reported.
"Biden’s botched exit from Afghanistan is the most astonishing display of gross incompetence by a nation’s leader, perhaps at any time," Trump said at a rally days after the incident. Biden deflected blame to the Afghan armed, but Trump insisted the blame lay completely with Biden.
Thanks to Biden's foolhardy plan, Kareem Nikoui's family will never be the same. His mother, Shana Chappell, is now grieving two sons after Dakota Halverson, 28, took his own life following the loss of his brother, CNN reported.
The distraught man committed suicide in the same park where the two would play as boys. The family knew Halverson was suffering, but it wasn't clear how severely until then.
"He started expressing that Kareem’s really gone, that he just wanted to be with him. And how much he misses him and loves him," Chappell said.
"He’d come up here sometimes and night and sleep here to be with Kareem. He would say it bothers him that Kareem’s here alone," she told CNN, pointing to the gravesite where both sons would be buried.
The attorney general did the right thing in allowing Steve Nikoui to go free without charges. Still, it does nothing to lessen the damage Biden and his administration did to this family and to the nation.
