On Thursday, GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy‘s campaign claimed that protestors hit their car parked in Grinnell, Iowa.
Grinnell police quickly denied the claim.
According to the police, Ramaswamy’s car was hit by another car when it was parked outside a coffee shop, whose driver had nothing to do with the protest.
The presidential candidate’s car had no one inside it at the time of the incident, the police said.
In a statement issued Thursday night, the police stated that their investigation into the matter has shown no evidence to prove that protesters struck Ramaswamy’s car and fled.
The police further said that the driver of the car in question was a woman who had had her lunch at a deli and backed out of a parking spot into the campaign’s rental vehicle.
The police took a report and released the driver while issuing her a summons for unsafe backing.
The driver reportedly told the police that she had not come to the area to protest, and that she did not know who the owner of the vehicle she hit was. She also said that she never fled the site of the accident, according to the police’s statement.
“Suppose a guy wearing a MAGA hat is standing amongst protestors at a Democrat presidential candidate’s event, then gets into his car with aggressive bumper stickers, flips off the candidate & screams profanities, lays on his horn, and then reverse-rams the candidate’s parked SUV,” Ramaswamy posted on X, after the police’s statement.
Tricia McLaughlin, Ramaswamy’s senior adviser, took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to post a photo and video of a person in a car flipping off Ramaswamy. The video and photo did not, however, show the actual collision. “I’m sure they’d be just as eager to call it an unrelated accident, right?” she added.
Ramaswamy recently made headlines by rapping with YouTuber Jake Paul.
