DISTURBANCE

Reporter Arrested After Peppering Health Secretary With Questions

Police claim he created a disturbance.

A reporter for Public News Service was arrested at the West Virginia State Capitol on Tuesday after peppering Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price with questions. Dan Heyman said he was looking to get answers about about the recently House-passed health-care plan. Heyman, who held a press conference after he posted bail, said capitol police at some point “decided I was just too persistent in asking this question and trying to do my job and so they arrested me.” A criminal complaint states Heyman was “aggressively breaching the Secret Service agents to the point where the agents were forced to remove him a couple of times from the area walking up the hallway in the main building of the Capitol. The defendant was causing a disturbance by yelling at [Kellyanne] Conway and Secretary Price.” However, the officer who filed the report claimed that he detained Heyman “before he tried aggressively to breach the security of the Secret Service.” Heyman called it the “first time I’ve ever been arrested for asking a question.” He said he received no warnings that he was in the wrong place or that he had done anything warranting an arrest.