U.S. Senator David Perdue is being sued for battery after video of him appearing to grab a student’s cell phone out of his hands went viral. As the Georgia freshman Republican Senator snatched the phone, the student can be heard on the video repeatedly saying, “You stole my property.”
The student, who attends Georgia Tech, then said: “Give me my phone back, Senator.”
The lawsuit charges Perdue turned the recording off after he grabbed the phone out of the student’s hand.
After getting the phone back, the student says, “David Perdue just snatched my phone because he won’t answer a question from one of his constituents. He’s trying to leave. He’s trying to leave because he won’t answer why he’s endorsing a candidate who’s trying to purge people from voting on the basis of their race.”
All that can be heard on the video, as Law&Crime reports.
Here’s a copy of the video:
According to the lawsuit, “Senator Perdue had previously asked for [the] phone, and [the student] refused to consent to Senator Perdue taking his phone. When [the student] began asking about voter-suppression allegations against Kemp, Senator Perdue did not want to answer the question and did not want the exchange recorded, despite Senator Perdue being in a public place and simply being asked about a public-policy matter by a constituent. Instead of answering his constituent’s question, civilly interacting with [the student], or simply leaving, Senator Perdue forcefully took [the student’s] phone without his permission in a rude and offensive manner, which constitutes unlawful battery under Georgia law.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Political Insider blog reports the attorneys representing the student say he has “asked for anonymity out of fear of retribution.”
Perdue’s office issued a statement claiming, “The Senator was simply asked to take a picture and went to take a selfie as he often does with hundreds of people. The Senator was also not ignoring their questions, in fact, he had just finished answering several students’ questions about climate change. Sadly, but not surprisingly, this is another attempt by liberal activists to distort the facts and distract the people of Georgia just weeks before an election.”
This is not Senator Perdue’s first exposure to national condemnation.
In 2016 Senator Perdue used a passage from the Christian Bible to appear to pray for President Barack Obama’s life to end.
Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license