WATCH: Security Roughs Up Reporter as Canada’s Justin Trudeau Arrives at Event

Canadian media outlet Rebel News is suing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s security detail after officers roughed up veteran journalist David Menzies as he stood on a public sidewalk as Trudeau arrived at an event in Toronto earlier this month.

Raw video footage of the Dec. 9 encounter, which was reviewed by Breitbart News, shows Menzies chatting amiably with people outside a venue called Brickworks, at one point asking passers-by why they thought the prime minister was late for the event.

As a motorcade is seen arriving at the venue, an officer tells Menzies, who appears to be standing on the sidewalk, to “get out of the road” because he could “get hit by a car.” (The person operating the video camera appears, from the camera angle, to be standing in the road.) Menzies then jokes, “You’d like to see that.” The officer replies, “I wouldn’t like to see that at all. … It means a lot of paperwork for me.”

Menzies laughs; the mood still appears jovial.

Several seconds later, without warning or provocation, an officer appears to seize Menzies by the arm. Several other officers then surround him, pushing him down the sidewalk and shoving his face into a wooden fence, restraining him. “Are you kidding?” Menzies asks, noting that he was standing on a public sidewalk. He demands to know whether he is under arrest, and the officers do not respond.

Public sidewalks offer similar protections of free speech and press freedom in Canada as they do in the U.S., with rare exceptions.

The lawsuit, filed by Menzies and Rebel News against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and several officers, notes:

While Mr. Menzies prepared for the Prime Minister’s arrival at Brickworks on public property, several RCMP officers … intentionally surrounded, detained, totally confined, physically assaulted and battered, and knocked over Mr. Menzies, and prevented Mr. Menzies from interacting with the Prime Minister, all without provocation, warning, or reasonable grounds and against Mr. Menzies’ will.

The lawsuit also notes that Trudeau and his government have repeatedly barred Rebel News, a conservative outlet, from public events, despite Trudeau’s professed commitment to press freedom.

It suggests that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers in Trudeau’s security detail were acting out of political motives and “a culture of aggression” against Rebel News.

Breitbart News reached out to Prime Minister Trudeau’s office for comment and did not receive a response.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.