Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur turned woke-bashing GOP presidential candidate, claimed that protesters struck his car in a targeted attack, but Iowa police have now rejected that version of events.
Police say that the woman driving the car that struck the unoccupied black Ford Expedition that was being used by Mr Ramaswamy’s campaign wasn’t connected to an ongoing protest.
The incident took place on Thursday afternoon when the Ford was hit by a Honda Civic outside a coffee shop in Grinnell, Iowa.
The campaign suggested that the crash was caused by protesters furious at Mr Ramaswamy’s comments about cutting off aid to Ukraine amid the Russian war of aggression. They said that a protester yelled and swore at Mr Ramaswamy before getting into a car, slamming into the Ford and driving away.
“Things clearly escalated,” campaign spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, according to the Des Moines Register.
She added that Mr 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 a probe by the Grinnell Police Department indicated that 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,” the department said in a Thursday night press release.
The police said, “our investigation has revealed no evidence to substantiate” the notion that it was an attack by protesters.
The probe revealed that the driver had just had lunch at Jay’s Deli and backed out of her parking spot, striking the Ford. She was released with a summons for unsafe backing, according to the press release.
“Had a civil exchange with protestors today, right before two of them then got into their car & rammed it into ours,” Mr Ramaswamy wrote on X shortly before 5pm on Thursday. “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 campaign didn’t back down when the police revelations were put to them, according to the Des Moines Register and the Associated Press.
“I’m very confident, as a witness,” Ms McLaughlin said.
The Ramaswamy campaign sent a 15-second video to the Iowa paper which seems to show the candidate walking in Grinnell. As he talks on the phone, the driver of a blue Honda honks her horn and seems to give him the finger.
Ms McLaughlin said the campaign didn’t have footage of the collision and Mr Ramaswamy said he didn’t see the crash.
Ex-state senator Jake Chapman, a Ramaswamy supporter who accompanied the campaign on Thursday, told the press that he saw the crash and that it was a protester and who he thought was her boyfriend.
Mr Ramwaswamy said during the first GOP primary debate that it was “disastrous” that the US was “protecting against an invasion across somebody else’s border”. He suggested that support sent to Ukraine should be used for what he called the “invasion of our own southern border”.
