CALLED OUT

Cops Blow a Hole Through Vivek Ramaswamy’s Iowa Fender Bender Story

The 2024 hopeful claimed a protester intentionally drove their vehicle into an unoccupied campaign car in Iowa. Local police are telling a different story.

2024 presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy said Thursday that he was the victim of an intentional attack by two protesters who he claimed had driven their vehicle into an unoccupied campaign car at a coffee shop in Iowa near where he was campaigning. But police there told a different story—saying their investigation turned up “no evidence to substantiate” the idea that the driver intentionally hit the campaign’s rental vehicle. “[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,” Grinnell police said in a statement. They were subsequently issued a summons for “unsafe backing.” Despite the police statement, Ramaswamy’s campaign said it stood by the initial narrative it had shared. “I’m very confident, as a witness,” his spokesperson told a reporter for the Des Moines Register. A statement issued by the campaign also claims to have video evidence of the individuals “flipping off Vivek,” and said it was “puzzling” why police released the statement in the first place.