Two months after the Biden administration denied his Democratic rival’s request for Secret Service protection an armed man allegedly impersonating a U.S. Marshal was taken into custody at a Robert Kennedy Jr. campaign event in Los Angeles on Friday afternoon, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The suspect was identified as Adrian Paul Aispuro, 44, and he is currently being held in the custody of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department on $35,000 bail for a felony charge of carrying a concealed weapon.
Aispuro was carrying a loaded pistol and presented himself as a federal law enforcement officer at a side entrance to a theatre in Los Angeles Friday night where Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was about to give a speech for Hispanic Heritage Month.
Aispuro, whose TikTok and Rumble accounts depict him as a Trump-loving conspiracy theorist, claimed to be part of Kennedy’s security team and told the candidate’s actual private security team that he urgently needed to be taken to the candidate.
Observing that the man had a handgun, Kennedy’s security team removed the man from the area, isolated, and surrounded him, and notified LAPD.
Nobody was harmed in the incident.
LAPD also took custody of the primary suspect’s brother Raymond Aispuro, who came to the campaign event with the gun-toting Trump supporter.
Raymond Aispuro said his brother is an unemployed emergency medical technician who lives with their parents, does not have a car, and asked him for a ride to what the accused told him was a single-day security job.
He went on to call his brother a “loner” who does not have a wife or a girlfriend and spends hours watching online videos about aliens.
“He told me that he was in communication with someone about a gig, like a private contract gig, a one-time deal, and he had to go that day to work it,” Raymond Aispuro said. “I don’t know who he talks to or what, I just get whatever vague information he gives me.”
Protectors observed that the man seeking access to the event had a backpack, found to contain at least one other handgun, multiple knives, and extra ammunition.
“The security imposter, who was wearing sunglasses, appeared to have laid his plans in advance, as he was carrying what appeared to be a U.S. Marshal badge on a lanyard and beltclip federal ID,” the Kennedy campaign said. “The Kennedy campaign is seeking additional information from law enforcement authorities.”
Posting about the incident on X later that evening, the candidate expressed his gratitude to his security detail and the LAPD for their swift response.
In July, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas rejected a request from Kennedy for Secret Service protection following an unusually early request from Kennedy’s campaign.
Kennedy said this denial came after nearly three months with no response to his campaign’s request for Secret Service protection and despite his campaign having submitted a 67-page report “from the world’s leading protection firm, detailing unique and well established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.”
Kennedy said at the time that his request “included a 67-page report…detailing unique and well-established security and safety risks aside from commonplace death threats.”
Kennedy, whose father and uncle were both assassinated, raised the issue of a Secret Service detail again in his statement on Friday night, claiming he was the “first presidential candidate in history” to be denied protection upon request.
“I’m still entertaining a hope that President Biden will allow me Secret Service protection,” said Kennedy.
Unlike many other high-profile candidates who were given Secret Service protection more than a year before the general election, Kennedy’s applications, one filed in May and another in August, have both been rejected. The campaign plans to apply a third time this month.
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