The U.S. Army has disputed a claim from Donald Trump’s campaign that nobody on his staff got physical with an employee of Arlington National Cemetery on Monday.
Instead, the military branch confirmed Thursday that a member of Trump’s staff “abruptly pushed” a woman employee after she sought to “ensure adherence” to cemetery rules that bars recording for political purposes.
The Army said the woman reported the incident to local cops but ultimately decided against pressing charges. It remains unclear who in Trump’s orbit did the alleged pushing.
The Army can’t press assault charges on her behalf. She’s elected not to, which in this unique situation, is probably reasonable if she wants to continue having a normal life after this. Being an institution, and not an individual, the only real recourse the Army have would be to pursue a federal charges relating to misuse of the land and photography and such, but not doing so is the whole point of my initial post. In addition, even if they did, it would be a challenging case to prove that he was using it for campaign purposes given that he did not give a campaign speech or anything quite so flagrant. I’m not saying that anybody except for that poor staffer is completely in the right here, but it is probably the best case scenario: Trump and his team did something aggressively anti-patriotic, it was widely reported, and he has no way to possibly play the victim here.