Trump Labor Secretary Pick Was Accused Twice of Domestic Abuse in 1980’s While Anti-Abortion Chair

Ex-Wife Walks Back Allegations, Says He ‘Would Be an Excellent Addition to the Trump Team’

Donald Trump’s nominee to become Secretary of Labor, Andy Puzder, was twice accused of domestic abuse in the 1980’s and police were called to his home in the 1970’s for a domestic altercation, according to the Riverfront Times.

“The allegations were first aired in the couple’s 1989 divorce. The abuse allegations in the divorce filings then became the subject of a July 26, 1989, Riverfront Times cover story,” the newspaper reports.

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Puzder repeatedly denied the abuse allegations made by his ex-wife, Lisa Henning, calling them “baseless.”

In her divorce filing, Henning alleged that Puzder hit her, threw her to the floor and unplugged the phone after she tried to call the police for her help. Puzder would later acknowledge in a deposition that he “grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her back,” but said he did it to stop her from hurting herself. 

The divorce filing also detailed two other incidents: One in the late ’70s in which the neighbors called the police after a shouting match turned into a plate-throwing fight, and one in which Lisa Henning alleged that Puzder punched her in 1985 while they were driving in a car. Questioned about the incident in a deposition for the divorce case, Puzder said that he had not punched his wife, but acknowledged driving onto the curb: “I think it had to do with the liquid refreshment we had with our dinner more than anything else.”

After the Riverfront Times article was published Thursday afternoon a spokesman for Puzder supplied the paper with an email from Henning that recants her allegations of abuse, stating “You were not abusive.”

Dated November 30, it also states, “I wish you always the best of luck in any and all of your endeavors. I know you would be an excellent addition to the Trump team.”

When the RFT story ran in 1989 Puzder “was best-known as an anti-abortion crusader who’d authored the Missouri law imposing serious restrictions on using any state funds or facilities for abortion or related services,” the Riverfont Times notes. 

Puzder was also serving as the chair of then-Governor John Ashcroft’s Task Force for Mothers and Unborn Children. He offered to resign the post in light of the RFT story, according to a July 29, 1989 front page story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I wouldn’t want this to hurt the pro-life movement,” he told the daily. “I wouldn’t want this to hurt the task force, and, particularly, I don’t want it to hurt my family.”

Some responses via Twitter:

 

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license