Stuart Seldowitz, who served as National Security Council Chief in President Barack Obama’s administration, has been arrested and charged with harassment and stalking as a hate crime after footage emerged of him insulting a street food vendor for his religion and threatening his family.
The New York Police Department charged the 64-year-old, who was arrested on Wednesday, with three counts of stalking in the fourth degree, one of them as a hate crime, and one count of aggravated harassment in the second degree, according to ABC 7 New York.
Earlier this week, The Dallas Express reported on Seldowitz’s encounters with the unnamed food vendor, in which the former Obama advisor asked the man if he raped his own daughter “like Mohammed” did. He also suggested that he could have the man deported and have it arranged for Egypt’s security services to snatch the man’s parents in Egypt and torture them. The street food seller filmed the encounters from inside his cart and repeatedly asked Seldowitz to stop berating him and leave.
In an interview with NBC News, Seldowitz explained that the incident began when he simply asked the man if he was Egyptian and found out that the man allegedly sympathized with Hamas.
“This whole thing started when I innocently asked him if he was Egyptian, and he said yes,'” Seldowitz said. “I said, ‘This must be a tough time to be an Egyptian in New York.’ ”
Seldowitz claimed that the man replied: “No, it doesn’t cause me any problem because I fully support what Hamas did. I think what they did was fine. It’s not an issue for me. And it doesn’t cause me any problem.”
“I said you’re OK with the raping of women, the killing of children, the taking of hostages, and the killing of 1,200 people in Israel?” Seldowitz told the news station. “And he said, ‘Yes, it was all for Palestine,’ and that’s what got me upset.”
Some advocates for free speech believed Seldowitz showed low character but questioned whether his conduct amounted to a criminal act.
MMA star Jake Shields wrote on X, “This guy is human garbage, but did he commit a hate crime or use his First Amendment? I always lean towards allowing these bigots to expose themselves.”
The account @TowerGangJose for No Way, Jose! podcast host Jose Galison replied to Shields, noting that Seldowitz made some very specific threats that a person with the former advisor’s connections might actually be able to follow through with.
“I think hate crimes are nonsense, but as multiple people have already pointed out, he allegedly threatened the man’s family in Egypt by saying he’d get the authorities to torture them by pulling out their fingernails. Considering his connections and Egypt’s past of doing such things, this strikes me as a legitimate threat of violence and, thus, a legitimate crime. ”
Still, in a subsequent post, @TowerGangJose speculated that the incident could be used to restrict more speech on ‘hate’ grounds.
“That should be on all the headlines as opposed to hate crime nonsense. Framing it this way seems like a sneaky way to gain acceptance of criminalizing speech. Factual, but not truthful,” the post read.
Another X poster, Dan Israel (@DanIsraelMusic), disapproved of how Seldowitz reacted but noted that the videos that made the news don’t tell the whole story.
“Let’s be clear — Stuart Seldowitz’s behavior was ugly. But now I hear that the video was selectively edited to leave out the part where the food vendor said he supported Hamas and October 7. That is pretty damn ugly too!”
Seldowitz was granted a supervised release on Thursday, and the two co-owners of the food vending cart were granted a temporary order of protection, per ABC 7.