Heshy Tischler says he’ll turn himself in to NYPD on Monday
A controversial City Council candidate will be arrested Monday for the Wednesday night attack of an Orthodox Jewish reporter covering a protest in Brooklyn, the candidate announced Friday in an unhinged Twitter video.
Harold “Heshy” Tischler (at right, in crowd, and inset below) tweeted that he would surrender himself to the NYPD’s 66th Precinct at 10 a.m. Monday for inciting a riot and for the alleged attack on Jewish Insider reporter Jacob Kornbluh.
Kornbluh was reporting on a Borough Park demonstration when he was attacked Wednesday night by a mob protesting schools and businesses being closed down due to a spike in COVID -19 cases.
“I just got a call from the precinct. They will be arresting me Monday morning. I’ll be taken in for inciting a riot,” Tischler says in the video posted to Twitter. “I will, of course, be pleading not guilty and Mr. Jacobcob Kornbluh is a very terrible, bad man.”
He is expected to be charged with unlawful imprisonment for ordering people to surround the reporter as well, police sources said.
On Friday, Tischler apologized for a video that went viral this week in which he was caught calling the mayor’s wife, Chirlane McCray, a “retard woman” and a “kurva,” which means whore in Yiddish.
“I am apologizing to Mrs. de Blasio — not who she is — that I said a bad name as a woman. I called her a badwoman name. I apologize for that, I shouldn’t have done that name,” Tischler continued.
Kornbluh has posted on social media that he was hit about the head and kicked during the melee.
Earlier in the day Friday, Mayor de Blasio said that an arrest was imminent.
“I checked in with [Police Commissioner Dermot] Shea earlier,” de Blasio said on Brian Lehrer’s radio show Friday. “An arrest is expected in that case shortly, and obviously that just can’t happen. You cannot have someone assaulted for trying to actually report the news to everyone.”
Gov. Cuomo had urged de Blasio, the NYPD and the Brooklyn DA to act quickly.
“NYPD: arrest people who are in the midst of criminal behavior. District Attorney: prosecute a person for criminal behavior. The law is the law,” Cuomo said. “Peaceful protest by the Hasidic community, fine. You’re beating a journalist, criminal behavior. The person should be arrested. How did we come to a situation where you allow people to be beaten?”
A group of city rabbis along with Kornbluh held a Zoom press conference Friday calling for criminal charges.
“We’re calling upon the NYPD and Mayor de Blasio and Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez to immediately arrest and bring charges against Heshy Tischler,” said Rabbi Rachel Timoner.
“It was discouraging to see that I was subject to violence when I was clearly doing my job, number one, as a journalist but also as a member of this community to observe a scene where people in my community have voiced their frustration in some of the measures that was outlined by the governor and the mayor,” Kornbluh said.