The Trump campaign has denied a report that claims two aides on Donald Trump’s team verbally abused and shoved an official at Arlington National Cemetery during a wreath laying ceremony on Monday.
A source with knowledge of the incident told NPR on Tuesday that the Trump staffers became verbally and physically belligerent after a cemetery official tried to prevent them from filming in Section 60, a 14-acre area where U.S. service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan are laid to rest.
The source said that it had been made clear to the Trump team that only cemetery officials were allowed to take photographs inside the plot.
The Trump campaign refuted the source’s characterization of events in a statement to The Daily Beast.
“There was no physical altercation as described and we are prepared to release footage if such defamatory claims are made,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said. He did not respond to The Daily Beast or NPR’s request to share the footage.
“The fact is that a private photographer was permitted on the premises and for whatever reason an unnamed individual, clearly suffering from a mental health episode, decided to physically block members of President Trump’s team during a very solemn ceremony,” Cheung said.
Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Trump, called the cemetery official “a despicable individual” who did not deserve to represent the “hollowed grounds” of the cemetery.
“Whoever this individual is spreading these lies are dishonoring the men and women of our armed forces,” he added of NPR’s source, “and they are disrespecting everyone who paid the price for defending our country.”
In a statement to NPR, Arlington National Cemetery said it could “confirm there was an incident, and a report was filed.”
“Federal law prohibits political campaign or election-related activities within Army National Military Cemeteries, to include photographers, content creators or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign,” it said.
“Arlington National Cemetery reinforced and widely shared this law and its prohibitions with all participants.”
Cheung claimed in a Tuesday night tweet that the campaign had been explicitly granted permission to bring a photographer to the site. He shared a cropped screenshot that appeared to show an unattributed email instructing the campaign that Trump was allowed “an official photographer and/or videographer outside of the main media pool.”
Trump was at Arlington to observe the anniversary of the 2021 Kabul airport attack, a suicide bombing that killed 13 American service members amid the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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