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Sunny Hostin uses her status as cohost of ‘The View’ to urge cops to let her son off with warning

July 18, 2026 | | Print Article

Co-hosting duty on “The View” was just one of the status claims Sunny Hostin repeatedly dropped in her effort to have cops let her son off with a warning for what typically counts as criminal trespassing.


(Video Credit: New York Post)

Known for kvetching on national television with lamentations about race relations and President Donald Trump, Hostin is also familiar to ABC viewers for her background as a former federal prosecutor. This, along with her son’s university pedigree, athletic endeavors, and current occupation, were points raised numerous times in bodycam footage after 24-year-old Gabriel Hostin was stopped on private property alongside the track of the Metro-North Railroad.

Already on the phone with his mother when MTA Police stopped him on June 16, 2026, in Westchester County, Hostin was quick to assert the background of both her son and herself. “My name is Sunny Hostin and I’m one of the co-hosts of ‘The View’ and I’m a former federal prosecutor.”

“That’s my son. He’s a Harvard graduate. He doesn’t have a criminal record,” she insisted, points later reiterated, “I’m a former federal prosecutor. He knows. He’s a Harvard grad who teaches 4th grade geometry to South Bronx kids.”

“This is not a kid who’s ever in trouble. It’s an innocent mistake, “said Hostin, who pleaded that her son be let off with a warning, “Why would you put something on his record like this?”

At one point in the video, the young Hostin asked, “Is this necessary?” as well as, “What happens if you didn’t do it?” in regard to issuing a summons for a later court appearance. One of the MTA officers could be heard explaining that Hostin’s alleged presence on the tracks was “an arrestable offense.”

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“We’re dimming it down to a trespass violation because you were in the right-of-way, you weren’t in the gauge or anything, which is the middle area where the tracks were on,” said the officer. “And you’ve been very cooperative with us and you have a good background, everything like that. We know you’re not a criminal or anything like that, but our hands are tied with cameras everywhere.”

In a letter obtained by TMZ to Westchester Assistant District Attorney Amanda Greene, Hostin appeared to be representing her son ahead of a reported July 31 court appearance. She wrote, “When jogging, he observed what appeared to be a gravel incline that could be used for hill training. Although there was a gate at the entrance of the gravel incline, the gates were standing open.”

“The only ‘No Trespassing’ sign was affixed to the left gate and, because the gates were open, it was not visible to my client as he entered the property,” she argued.

Hostin, who has of late repeatedly shared her “unsafe” feelings around too many American flags, previously insisted that she had to protect her son from allegedly racist neighbors.

“As a mother of black children,” she said in Oct. 2025, “I know that black boys are not given the presumption of innocence and the presumption of youth … And so for me, what was interesting was I have had to be in the position where I have gone to my local police department because I know my son is going to be training for the Junior Olympics, running around the neighborhood in an all-white neighborhood.”

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“And I have brought him to the police and said, ‘he belongs to me. This is my son. Do not harass him. Do not stop him,'” she went on as reactions to the bodycam footage called Hostin out for “oozing with privilege.”

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Kevin Haggerty
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