A Republican candidate for state Senate in Virginia may have lied about the happenings of a night when she claimed Black Lives Matter protesters attacked her and her child, according to a report.
Tara Durant is seeking a seat representing an area around Fredericksburg. If she wins, it could change the balance of power in the state Senate from Democrats to Republicans.
Durant has claimed that, on the night of a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020, she was driving with her 12-year-old daughter and called 911, claiming that she was being terrorized.
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
Her claim was highlighted by former Fox host Tucker Carlson, who has since been fired, who was able to obtain her 911 call and played part of it. It reported that a "violent mob" was after her. Carlson claimed her experience had been one shared by many Americans who had been "intentionally abandoned by the state that promised to protect them."
But a Freedom of Information request filed by Huffington Post reporter Jen Bendery suggested that it was the Republican who was the one acting aggressively toward the protesters.
The police documents she obtained showed that, while Durant did call 911 and reported she was being surrounded, there were other 911 calls at the time from protesters saying that there was a car being driven aggressively toward the protesters.
Fredericksburg is under two hours from Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered in 2017 to protest a statue of Robert E. Lee being removed. One of those rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer. The self-described white nationalist, James Alex Fields, Jr., was found guilty of her death after being charged with 30 federal hate crimes and was sent to prison for life.
Nearly three years later and two hours east, Durant was in her car calling 911 from the same intersection where protesters reported a car acting aggressively toward them.
“I got in politics a few years ago because, as many of you know my story, that the personal safety of my daughter and me were threatened,” Bendery quoted Durant, speaking at a September event with GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. “That has been a key issue in my campaign, because we saw what became the ‘defund the police’ movement.”
Bendery posted the police documents obtained (below) with the Huffington Post story, saying that the police say that the protest where Durant said she was attacked was "peaceful" and there was no property damage.
Read the full report at the Huffington Post.
