Reporter Arrested in West Virginia After Persistently Asking Questions of Tom Price -
By CHRISTOPHER MELEMAY 10, 2017
As Tom Price, the secretary of the Department of Health
and Human Services, headed to a meeting at the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston on Tuesday, a reporter from the Public News Service trailed after him in a hallway.
The arrest stirred suspicions that officers were trying to thwart his effort to ask questions, though a criminal complaint said he “tried aggressively to breach the security of the Secret Service”
and was “causing a disturbance by yelling questions.”
His lawyer, J. Timothy DiPiero, said at a news conference on Tuesday night
that this was a “highly unusual case,” adding, “I’ve never had a client get arrested for talking too loud or anything similar to that.”
And in a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia called
Mr. Heyman’s arrest “a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press.”
“The charges against him are outrageous, and they must be dropped immediately,” it said.
After persisting in his questions for nearly a minute, Mr. Heyman was pulled to the side by officers of the West Virginia Division of Protective Services, also known as the Capitol Police, handcuffed
and charged with a misdemeanor count of willful disruption of governmental processes.
Lawrence Messina, a spokesman for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs
and Public Safety, which oversees the Capitol Police, said there was no effort to silence Mr. Heyman.