Liberal Pundit Kurt Bardella Arrested After Altercation With University Police Officer
Kurt Bardella, an liberal pundit and NBC contributor who received media attention for his public conversion from a Republican to a Democrat, was arrested on Monday for “simple assault” after he reportedly got into an altercation with a university police officer.
According to the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani, Bardella got “into an altercation with a Georgetown University police officer who tried to bar him from entering a forum featuring 2020 presidential candidates.”
“The Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to The Daily Beast that the Republican operative-turned-Democratic pundit was arrested early Thursday morning after getting into a brief physical dispute with a campus police officer in a stairwell at Georgetown University,” the Daily Beast reported, adding that the police report claimed Bardella had slapped the officer’s arm.
The report said Bardella then “began to run up the stairs,” and was chased by several officers. When officers informed him that he was under arrest, Bardella is said to have “resisted being handcuffed,” and “was then taken to a prone position” by Georgetown University campus police.
Bardella criticized the police report and described it as “over the top.”
“This is an example of an officer who had the best of intentions who grossly overreacted,” Bardella told the Beast. “The idea that I slapped him is a lie.”
Bardella also disputed the police report in a series of Twitter posts.
In a statement to Mediaite, Bardella said, “This incident is insane since I was helping set up the event my wife’s company is the co-sponsor of.”
Bardella was formerly a Republican spokesman for the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform and a consultant for Breitbart News, before he announced his conversion to the Democratic Party.
In December 2017, Bardella wrote a USA Today article titled, “Roy Moore is the last straw, you can now call me a Democrat.”
Bardella declared, “This is not a party I want to be associated with any longer… I believe that the Democratic Party will do more to create equality in America than the Republican Party ever will.”
“I am throwing in with the Democratic Party because at the end of the day, I believe its portrait of America is better than the one being painted by today’s Republican Party. And I want to be a part of it,” he continued.
A year later, Bardella published a follow-up article at USA Today where he claimed he had “felt like a fraud as a Republican.”
This post has been updated with comment from Kurt Bardella.
