Steve Nikoui, the gold star father who was arrested after heckling President Joe Biden during last week’s State of the Union address, said he has not had charges dropped against him.

Nikoui also said he still stands behind calling out the president, who he says was “100%” at fault for his son’s death during the withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

“I’ve waited three years, I paid $3,000 and I’ve traveled 3,000 miles to finally hear my son’s name in the State of the Union,” Nikoui told The Daily Mail, ?adding that he and other gold star families who attended the address want the Biden administration to accept responsibility for the rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

Nikoui’s son, Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, was one of the 13 U.S. service members who were killed by a suicide bomber at Hamid Karzai International Airport while trying to process the evacuees fleeing the country in August 2021, as the Taliban was taking control of the nation. Biden has not spoken about their deaths. 

“Joe Biden, personally, is the reason for that fiasco, 100%,” Steve Nikoui said.

Nikoui was invited to the speech by Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., but was escorted out after he started yelling ” “Abbey Gate!,” “Second Battalion, First Marines!” while Biden was speaking.

Nikoui said he found it “devastating” that Biden mentioned murdered Georgia nursing student Laken Riley — after heckling by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — but has never mentioned his son and the others who were killed in Afghanistan.

“I was just strongly convicted by the Holy Spirit to stand up and say that after sitting there for almost an hour of just total disrespect to us,” Nikoui said. “He knew that there were other gold star family members. He could have at least just said their names and this would have been done.’”

Nikoui was charged with misdemeanor charges of crowding, obstructing, or incommoding Congress and is due back in court March 28.

Mast helped get Nikoui released from custody under the House sergeant at arms, and told The New York Post in a statement that not only had Nikoui lost his son “due to Joe Biden’s incompetence” but had lost another son by suicide “to grief over his brother being killed” a year later, on Aug. 9, 2022. 

“This man and his family have given America more than I could personally bear, and to attack him with a B.S. charge of ‘demonstrating’ is a disgrace,” Mast said.

Rep. Mike Waltz, R-Fla., said it’s “shameful” that Nikoui was arrested, and called it “infuriating” that Biden has “yet to say” the names of those killed at Abbey Gate “privately, publicly, in a speech, anywhere.”

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