Sen. David Perdue sued for snatching his phone, Report.
A Georgia Tech University student filed a lawsuit against Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) on Monday for allegedly snatching a cellphone out of the student’s hands in an incident that was caught on video.
Nate Knauf filed a the civil battery complaint against Perdue in the Fulton County State Court, according to a statement from Atlanta-based law firm Dreyer Sterling, LLC.
The complaint follows a Oct. 13 incident at the university’s campus when Knauf attempted to ask Perdue about his endorsement of Georgia gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp (R).
Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state who oversees elections, has been accused of seeking to suppress minority voter registration and is being sued by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP.
A Perdue spokeswoman told The Hill on Monday that the lawsuit was an example of Georgia Democrats taking their “extreme tactics too far.”
Knauf’s lawyers, David Dreyer and Michael Sterling, are both active in Democratic politics.
Dreyer is a Georgia state representative who has supported Stacey Abrams, Kemp’s Democratic opponent for Georgia governor.
Sterling is a former city official who ran as a Democrat for Atlanta mayor in 2017. He suspended his mayoral bid just weeks before the election.
“This complaint is complete nonsense and lacks any merit whatsoever. All you have to do is look at the political hacks who are trying to spin something out of nothing,” the spokeswoman said in a statement. “This is being orchestrated by a former Obama operative and current Democrat state representative who spends most of his time campaigning for Stacey Abrams.”
“Georgians will see this for what it is – a manufactured setup to embarrass the senator and attack his credibility two weeks before the midterm elections,” the statement continued. “Instead, Democrats are embarrassing themselves with a frivolous case that will only waste the court’s time.”
During the contested interaction, Knauf, who was previously unidentified, approached the Republican senator and recorded the interaction.
“Hey, so, uh, how can you endorse a candidate—” the student can be heard saying, before the video begins to shake and Perdue says, “I’m not doing that.”
“You stole my property,” the student tells Perdue. “You stole my property.”
“Alright, you wanted a picture?” the senator replies.
“Give me my phone back, senator,” the student says.
Perdue appears to ignore the student’s request and repeats, “You wanted a picture?”
The student again asks for his phone back and the video corrects itself.
Perdue is then seen walking away through a crowd.
