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A prime ballot-access advisor for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s impartial presidential marketing campaign was arrested on assault expenses at a luxurious Manhattan lodge early final Saturday morning, the New York Police Department stated.
The advisor, Trent Pool, 37, was taken into custody on the Soho Grand Hotel and charged with prison obstruction of respiration and assault, the police stated. An unidentified 25-year-old girl stated he had “wrapped his hand round her neck making it exhausting for her to breath after which struck her within the face with a closed fist,” based on a police consultant. The girl declined medical consideration on the scene.
The arrest was reported earlier by Mediaite.
Stefanie Spear, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy marketing campaign, stated Friday: “Trent is a contractor. He tells us that the alleged incident by no means occurred.”
Gregory Esposito, a lawyer for Mr. Pool, stated, “Mr. Trent Pool is harmless of all expenses, and we sit up for demonstrating so in court docket.”
Mr. Pool, a Texas-based petition circulator, has performed a central function in Mr. Kennedy’s ballot-access efforts, based on court docket data and three individuals aware of the marketing campaign who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate its inner workings. As an impartial candidate, Mr. Kennedy faces an uphill battle to get on the poll in all 50 states, an endeavor that might value tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
The Kennedy marketing campaign has paid one in all Mr. Pool’s corporations, Accelevate 2020, practically $390,000 for poll consulting. (Accelevate has additionally achieved work this election cycle for the presidential campaigns of Marianne Williamson, a Democrat, and Nikki Haley, a Republican, data present.)
Mr. Pool has been instrumental in selling an aggressive authorized technique to problem state signature-gathering guidelines, the individuals aware of the marketing campaign stated. Accelevate and Mr. Pool joined in a federal lawsuit in Utah filed by the Kennedy marketing campaign this yr, in search of to increase the state’s poll deadline and loosen its guidelines on who can collect signatures. Paul A. Rossi, a lawyer who has represented Mr. Pool in related lawsuits over time, is the Kennedy marketing campaign’s primary poll entry lawyer.
An excellent PAC backing Mr. Kennedy, American Values 2024, has additionally labored with Mr. Pool, based on public data and two of the individuals aware of Mr. Kennedy’s marketing campaign.
From December to the top of March — the most recent date for which marketing campaign expense experiences can be found — American Values paid $2.4 million to corporations for poll entry work, together with $1.2 million to a newly fashioned agency referred to as Public Appeal LLC, which was arrange final yr and whose management contains Mr. Pool and his brother, public data present.
Tony Lyons, one of many tremendous PAC’s leaders, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
