Two Turning Point USA members admit to assaulting queer professor

Two employees of a rightwing youth organization who harassed and assaulted a queer professor last year agreed to a diversion program and admitted they were guilty of the acts.

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Turning Point USA’s Kalen D’Almeida and Braden Ellis accosted the Arizona State University (ASU) professor David Boyles last October, hounding him about his sexuality and the classes he teaches. Boyles is an English instructor and the co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona.

At one point, D’Almeida pushed Boyles to the ground, bloodying his face. Boyles posted an image of his injuries online at the time, saying his physical injuries were “relatively minor” but that he felt “angry, violated, embarrassed and despairing at the fact that we have come to normalize this kind of harassment and violence” against the LGBTQ+ community.

Both D’Almeida and Ellis signed diversion agreements with prosecutors that acknowledge they committed the offenses and enter them into an educational program to avoid convictions, Phoenix TV station 12News reported.

D’Almeida, who was charged with misdemeanors for assault, harassment and disorderly conduct, and Ellis, charged with misdemeanor harassment, had previously pleaded not guilty and, in the immediate aftermath of the incident, the organization said Ellis, who works as its cameraman, would pursue charges against Boyles.

Boyles told the Guardian he was “disappointed but not surprised” that the county attorney pursued “the lightest possible slap on the wrist” for the Turning Point employees, but that he was gratified to see that “the two hateful losers who stalked, harassed, and assaulted me at my place of work last October have admitted their guilt”.

“I hope this incident has made people aware that Turning Point USA does not care about free speech or serious debate but instead trades in hateful and bigoted rhetoric solely to ‘create content’ for their endless tedious podcasts and to stoke fear and violence in the real world,” Boyles said in a statement. “And I hope administrators at Arizona State and other universities will work to protect their LGBTQ+ students, staff, and faculty by no longer indulging and coddling organizations like TPUSA.”

Turning Point USA said in a statement that it was “uninvolved in this matter, and the decision on the correct legal course had been left entirely to our reporters and their counsel”.

“To be clear, Kalen and Braden have not been found guilty of anything in court. Diversion is a legal tactic where all charges are dismissed, and the language is boilerplate and standard to all such cases,” a TPUSA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet, said. “The fact is our reporters would not be permitted a jury trial for such a low-level misdemeanor, but instead be subject to a bench decision from a judge, Tyler Kissell, who doesn’t even have a law degree, was vice-president of the ASU chapter of Young Democrats, ran for state senate as a Democrat, and whose recent work experience includes teaching pre-school. Given these realities, we entirely understand why they decided to pursue this route.”

ASU’s president, Michael Crow, previously condemned the attack on Boyles and has tried to get Turning Point to remove the university’s professors from its “professor watchlist” because it prompted harassment and threats against them.

“We are looking at all of our options now that the TP employees have plead[ed] guilty to their crimes,” Crow said in an email on Tuesday. “This includes direct engagement with TP to see what they are doing with their criminal employees.”

Turning Point USA plays a large role in Republican politics, especially in Arizona, where it is based. The group boosted Donald Trump’s candidacy and is aligned with the Maga movement. Its leaders, including founder and executive director Charlie Kirk, are prominent conservative commentators, and it has chapters on college campuses around the country. Multiple Arizona lawmakers have held jobs at the organization over the years, including state representative Austin Smith, who recently resigned from Turning Point after allegations he submitted forged signatures of voters in his petitions to run for re-election.

The organization has also clashed with the university community in a few instances, including over an event that brought Kirk and other conservatives to campus to speak.