A 44-year-old Raleigh firefighter and Green Party Senate candidate named Brian McGinnis is on paid administrative leave and facing seven criminal charges after he disrupted a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, physically fought Capitol police officers who tried to remove him, and ended up with his arm caught in a door during the struggle.

Three officers were injured. The hearing continued for another 87 minutes. The Green Party called it heroism.

What Happened in the Hart Building

According to Fire Rescue 1, the Senate Committee on Armed Services' subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support was meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building on Wednesday afternoon. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican from Alaska, had reminded the audience that protests are not allowed inside Congressional buildings and that violators would be escorted out by Capitol police.

About 30 minutes into the hearing, McGinnis stood up and started shouting. His statements, captured on video that went viral, centered on a single theme:

"Israel is the reason for this war. America does not want to fight this war for Israel."

"America does not want to send its sons and daughters to war for Israel."

Capitol police moved to remove him. McGinnis resisted. Officers wrestled him to the ground. During the struggle near the doorway, his arm became caught between two doors and made what witnesses described as a cracking sound.

Sen. Tim Sheehy, a Republican from Montana, jumped in to help officers restrain McGinnis, then, after noticing the arm injury, walked back and tried to free him. From the video available online, it does not appear Sheehy was touching McGinnis when his arm was caught.

Marine Corps Gen. Bradford Gering, who was about to testify, began his remarks without missing a beat.

The Charges and the Fallout

McGinnis now faces:

• Three counts of misdemeanor assault on a police officer
• Three counts of misdemeanor resisting arrest
• Misdemeanor: crowding, obstructing, and incommoding

Capitol police told McClatchy that three officers were injured and treated by fire and emergency services. Their written statement was unambiguous:

"An unruly man, who started to illegally protest during a hearing, put everyone in a dangerous position by violently resisting and fighting our officer's attempts to remove him from the room."

McGinnis, whose campaign website says he is a Marine Corps veteran, was reportedly wearing a Marine Corps uniform at the hearing, a potential violation of military regulations that could result in a $250 fine and six months in prison.

Raleigh Fire Chief Herbert Griffin confirmed that McGinnis has been placed on paid administrative leave from the Raleigh Fire Department pending the outcome of an active investigation. By Thursday afternoon, McGinnis' voicemail box was full. He did not respond to a text message from McClatchy.

The Predictable Spin

The responses split along exactly the lines you'd expect, with one notable exception: the Green Party decided this was the hill to die on.

North Carolina Green Party spokeswoman Kaila Fitzgerald attacked Sheehy, not the man who assaulted three police officers:

"For a Senator to participate in the assault of a citizen who was already being handled by police is a violent abuse of power that should disqualify him from public service."

The Green Party officially "saluted" McGinnis' actions. Take a moment with that. A man violently resists arrest, injures three officers, disrupts a national defense hearing, and his political party salutes him.

Fitzgerald also asked, "Is that how the Senate silences vocal opposition?" The answer, of course, is no. That is how police remove someone committing a crime. Sullivan told the audience beforehand what the rules were. McGinnis chose to break them and then chose to fight the officers enforcing them.

Sen. Sheehy's account of events was straightforward:

"Capitol Police were attempting to remove an unhinged protestor from the Armed Services hearing. He was fighting back. I decided to help out and deescalate the situation. This gentleman came to the Capitol looking for a confrontation, and he got one. I hope he gets the help he needs without causing further violence."

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican from Huntersville, thanked Sheehy on social media and noted McGinnis "injured three officers while violently resisting arrest."

The Bigger Pattern

McGinnis' outburst didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened the same week that former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley were taking victory laps after winning their party's nominations to the U.S. Senate in Tuesday night's North Carolina primaries. The state's Senate race is one of the most closely watched in the country, and McGinnis, a Green Party candidate, just made himself the face of fringe disruption in it.

There is a particular kind of protester who confuses confrontation with courage. McGinnis walked into a Senate hearing room, violated rules he was explicitly told about, screamed his political views, fought the officers tasked with maintaining order, injured three of them, and then became a cause célèbre for a party that commands virtually no electoral support anywhere in America.

His mother, Mary Lou, told McClatchy she had seen the video only five minutes before the reporter called. She hadn't been able to reach her son. She described him as a father of four.

"He was a wonderful kid. He's not a violent person at all, but is very strong."

That last part, at least, the three injured officers can confirm.

Rules Apply to Everyone

The left has spent years insisting that disruption is speech, that protest in any venue is sacred, and that consequences for illegal behavior during demonstrations amount to authoritarianism. But rules governing conduct inside Congressional buildings exist for obvious reasons. They protect everyone in the room, including the protesters themselves. When you fight police officers, you don't get to claim victimhood because the struggle went badly for you.

The Green Party wants you to focus on McGinnis' arm. The actual story is that a grown man assaulted three cops in a Senate hearing room, and his party threw him a parade for it.

The hearing, for what it's worth, carried on. Gen. Gering testified. The work of national defense continued. The system McGinnis tried to grind to a halt simply moved around him, the way it always does when spectacle meets substance.