Members of Donald J. Trump’s campaign team and an official at Arlington National Cemetery confronted each other during the former president’s visit to the cemetery on Monday, the military cemetery said in a statement on Tuesday.
The altercation was prompted, according to Trump campaign officials, by the presence of a photographer in a section of the cemetery where American troops who were killed in recent wars are buried. The cemetery released a statement saying that federal law prohibits political campaigning or “election-related” activities within Army cemeteries, including by photographers.
An official with the cemetery tried to “physically block” members of Mr. Trump’s team, Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said in a statement. Mr. Cheung added that the cemetery official was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode” and that the campaign was prepared to release footage of the confrontation to support its account of the clash. The campaign did not provide that footage after several requests.
Chris LaCivita, a top Trump campaign adviser, added in a separate statement that the cemetery official was “a disgrace and does not deserve to represent the hollowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.”
Cemetery officials did not provide their own account of the encounter, saying instead that “there was an incident, and a report was filed.”
The cemetery added that it had “reinforced and widely shared” to the Trump campaign the federal laws prohibiting campaign activities by photographers “or any other persons attending for purposes, or in direct support of a partisan political candidate’s campaign.”
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