A consultant hired to help run independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ballot access campaign was arrested after allegedly choking and punching a woman at a Manhattan hotel, according to the New York Police Department.
Police were called to the Soho Grand Hotel on April 27 at 5:19 a.m. after a report that Trent Pool, 37, was involved in a dispute with a 25-year-old woman, an NYPD spokesperson told The Epoch Times.
The woman told police Mr. Pool “wrapped his hand around her neck, making it hard for her to breathe, and then struck her in the face with a closed fist, causing pain.”
According to the NYPD spokesperson, she refused medical attention at the scene while Mr. Pool was taken into custody without incident and charged with assault and criminal obstruction of breathing.
“Trent is a contractor. He tells us the alleged incident never occurred,” Stefanie Spear, Mr. Kennedy’s press secretary, told The Epoch Times.
Gregory Esposito, Mr. Pool’s attorney, told The Epoch Times in a statement that his client is innocent of all charges and “we look forward to demonstrating so in court.”
Mr. Pool is “not an employee of the Robert Kennedy campaign” and is “one of over 500 independent contractors working on presidential ballot access for the 2024 elections,” said Mr. Esposito, noting that his client has never been indicted or convicted “of any violence of any kind.”
Mr. Pool is CEO of Accelevate 2020, a firm that specializes in general campaign consulting and ballot access petitioning. He is a paid ballot access consultant for Mr. Kennedy’s campaign and is helping manage the national ballot access quest.
Records indicate that Accelevate has also performed work for the presidential campaigns of former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, and presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, a Democrat.
American Values 2024, a super PAC working to get Mr. Kennedy elected president, hired another ballot access firm led by Mr. Pool, Public Appeal, according to Federal Elections Commission records.
Anthony Lyons, co-founder of American Values 2024, lamented the ballot access process that independent candidates must complete.
“The corrupt DNC and RNC uniparty has rigged the system against outsider candidates, forcing them to engage in mind-numbing ballot access drives that involve thousands of consultants, organizers, and volunteers. They then spend millions to make sure those candidates don’t succeed. Any candidate polling at over 15 percent nationally should automatically be on the ballot in every state,” Mr. Lyons told The Epoch Times on May 3.
Mr. Kennedy, claiming the Democratic National Committee was “rigging the primary” to prevent candidates from challenging President Joe Biden, announced last October that he would run as an independent.
He is striving to get on the general election ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and has estimated it will cost at least $15 million to accomplish that feat.
He appeared at a voter rally in Long Island, New York, on April 28. New York state law requires that independent candidates gather and submit at least 45,000 valid signatures in a 45-day window to qualify for the general election ballot.
In the early stages of his campaign, Mr. Kennedy relied on what he called “a grassroots army” of volunteers to gather signatures for ballot access. In recent months, his campaign has tasked paid consultants and petitioners with the arduous task of getting enough valid signatures for ballot access in each state.
Mr. Kennedy is officially on the ballot in Michigan and Utah. His campaign said he has collected enough signatures to appear on the ballot in California, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Nevada, and Texas.
During a press conference on May 1 in New York City, a campaign spokesperson spearheading ballot access efforts in New York said that more than 20,000 signatures have been gathered and that he was confident that at least 90,000 would be collected before the deadline, which is double the 45,000 minimum required.
