Cops Blow a Hole Through Vivek Ramaswamy’s Iowa Fender Bender Story
- 8 months ago
Cops Blow a Hole Through Vivek Ramaswamy’s Iowa Fender Bender Story.
Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign vehicle was hit Thursday afternoon in what the campaign said was an intentional act by protesters but police say was nothing more than an accident involving a driver unconnected to the protest.
No one was hurt in the incident in which an unoccupied black Ford Expedition being used by the Ramaswamy campaign was struck by a Grinnell woman's Honda Civic outside a coffeehouse in town.
The Ramaswamy campaign blamed the collision on protesters who they said were angry about Ramaswamy's remarks on aid for Ukraine, saying they yelled and swore at the presidential candidate before jumping into a vehicle, ramming the campaign car and speeding off.
“Things clearly escalated,” Ramaswamy spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “(Ramaswamy) is used to dealing with protesters and handled it very calmly. So he was maybe a little more calm about it than the rest of us.”
But that's not what really happened, according to the Grinnell Police Department's investigation.
The department issued a media release Thursday evening saying "our investigation has revealed no evidence to substantiate" the claim that protesters purposefully hit Ramaswamy's vehicle and fled.
Instead, the investigation showed that a patron had eaten lunch at Jay's Deli and backed out of a parking spot into the campaign's rental vehicle. A report was taken and the driver was released with a summons for unsafe backing, the release said.
"(The driver) stated she was not in the area to protest, she did not know who the vehicle she struck belonged to, she did not intentionally back into the vehicle, and she did not flee the scene of the accident," according to the release.
Following the incident, Ramaswamy noted in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the rest of the peaceful protesters shouldn't be lumped in with the two who were responsible for ramming his campaign vehicle.
“Had a civil exchange with protestors today, right before two of them then got into their car & rammed it into ours,” he wrote. “Those two should be held accountable, but the rest of the peaceful protestors shouldn’t be tarred by the behavior of two bad actors.”
The Ramaswamy campaign, asked by the Des Moines Register at a campaign event Thursday evening to respond to the police's investigation, stood by their initial report that it was protesters who hit the campaign's vehicle.
"I'm very confident, as a witness," McLaughlin said. She said she had not spoken directly to Grinnell police.
The campaign sent a 15-second video clip to the Register that shows Ramaswamy walking in Grinnell, speaking on a private phone call while the driver of a blue Honda honks and appears to flip off the candidate.
McLaughlin said the campaign did not have video of the collision itself, and Ramaswamy said he did not see the accident take place. Jake Chapman, a former state senator who
Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign vehicle was hit Thursday afternoon in what the campaign said was an intentional act by protesters but police say was nothing more than an accident involving a driver unconnected to the protest.
No one was hurt in the incident in which an unoccupied black Ford Expedition being used by the Ramaswamy campaign was struck by a Grinnell woman's Honda Civic outside a coffeehouse in town.
The Ramaswamy campaign blamed the collision on protesters who they said were angry about Ramaswamy's remarks on aid for Ukraine, saying they yelled and swore at the presidential candidate before jumping into a vehicle, ramming the campaign car and speeding off.
“Things clearly escalated,” Ramaswamy spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. “(Ramaswamy) is used to dealing with protesters and handled it very calmly. So he was maybe a little more calm about it than the rest of us.”
But that's not what really happened, according to the Grinnell Police Department's investigation.
The department issued a media release Thursday evening saying "our investigation has revealed no evidence to substantiate" the claim that protesters purposefully hit Ramaswamy's vehicle and fled.
Instead, the investigation showed that a patron had eaten lunch at Jay's Deli and backed out of a parking spot into the campaign's rental vehicle. A report was taken and the driver was released with a summons for unsafe backing, the release said.
"(The driver) stated she was not in the area to protest, she did not know who the vehicle she struck belonged to, she did not intentionally back into the vehicle, and she did not flee the scene of the accident," according to the release.
Following the incident, Ramaswamy noted in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that the rest of the peaceful protesters shouldn't be lumped in with the two who were responsible for ramming his campaign vehicle.
“Had a civil exchange with protestors today, right before two of them then got into their car & rammed it into ours,” he wrote. “Those two should be held accountable, but the rest of the peaceful protestors shouldn’t be tarred by the behavior of two bad actors.”
The Ramaswamy campaign, asked by the Des Moines Register at a campaign event Thursday evening to respond to the police's investigation, stood by their initial report that it was protesters who hit the campaign's vehicle.
"I'm very confident, as a witness," McLaughlin said. She said she had not spoken directly to Grinnell police.
The campaign sent a 15-second video clip to the Register that shows Ramaswamy walking in Grinnell, speaking on a private phone call while the driver of a blue Honda honks and appears to flip off the candidate.
McLaughlin said the campaign did not have video of the collision itself, and Ramaswamy said he did not see the accident take place. Jake Chapman, a former state senator who