New report reveals unreported details of Minority Leader Matt Hall’s concerning history of harassment
LANSING — In case you missed it, yesterday, the Daily Beast broke a bombshell story on State Rep. Matt Hall detailing a police report filed by his girlfriend in 2019, which contained deeply concerning allegations of domestic violence and interfering in a 911 call.
In the piece, Daily Beat reporter Kate Briquelet lays out how Hall, while on his way to gamble, began driving fast and dangerously, with his girlfriend in the car. This behavior scared his girlfriend to the point that she dialed 911, twice. When she began to record him, out of fear of her own safety, he broke her phone. Later, an officer was dispatched to their house, advising Hall’s girlfriend to take her dog and stay somewhere else that night. As a reminder, this all took place while Hall was a sitting state legislator.
This isn’t the first time Minority Leader Hall was caught up in an intimate partner violence scandal. In 2018, one year before this incident, MLive highlighted threatening and racially tinged messages that Hall had sent while a college student who was friends with his then-girlfriend, where he makes claims like “the South will rise again!” and that he has a “bullet” with the other student’s name on it. At the time, Hall dismissed those comments. The American Independent dove into those emails this year, as the Michigan Legislature considered bills that prohibit citizens convicted of domestic violence from possessing firearms for eight years after their sentencing – bills that Hall opposed.
What’s clear here – beyond the immediate allegations – is that this is a serious and concerning pattern of violence that needs to be answered for. As more and more evidence of Matt Hall’s erratic, dangerous, and possibly violent behavior emerges, more questions arise about his fitness for public office. We will be watching closely to see how Hall and his MAGA cronies respond – will Hall’s Republican colleagues continue hiding to protect him from any accountability?
Read the most damning elements of the Daily Beast story below:
Daily Beast: Police Investigated MAGA Michigan Leader For Partner Violence
- Police records reveal that State House Republican Leader Matt Hall was accused in 2019 of domestic assault and interfering in a 911 call. He was never charged.
- Some critics are questioning whether Hall—who once invited former President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to spread election fraud lies before a Michigan House committee—is suitable to lead a state GOP already in disarray. (Kristina Karamo, the election-denying chair of the Michigan GOP, refuses to acknowledge her recent ouster.)
- As the House weighed another bill, which prohibits citizens convicted of domestic violence from possessing firearms for eight years after their sentencing, one news outlet highlighted Hall’s emailed threats to a college classmate of his then girlfriend in 2001. (Hall was among the majority of Republicans to vote against the legislation.)
- “He was driving fast and scaring [her],” the report states. “She became upset and asked him to stop driving in such a manner and just skip gambling for the night as he was very angry and stated he did not have time and had to get there in order to get his bets in at a certain time.”
- “At some point during the altercation, [she] began to record Matt on her phone,” the document adds. “He told her to stop recording him and then he forcefully grabbed her phone out of her hand while she was still holding it. He used enough force to break the screen on her phone. He then told her she was not going to record him.”
- Hall parked in the driveway, got in his own car, and left. “I asked [her] if she would cooperate with prosecution,” the officer noted in their report. “It does appear that she is interested in assisting with prosecution. She emailed the two phone recordings she had.”
- Neal said it’s extremely common for domestic violence accusers to recant, blame themselves, or refuse to participate in prosecution because it could impact their incomes and housing and they don’t want to see the person they love thrown in jail. “There’s just so many factors that play into, frequently women, not wanting to participate in prosecution,” she said. People are especially more hesitant to come forward concerning behavior if it relates to elected officials and people in powerful positions, Neal told The Daily Beast.
- “This happened when this guy was in the Legislature,” said Timmer, who is a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, a PAC founded by anti-Trump conservatives. “It’s recent, and it shows a problem with judgment and anger and behavior that I think is definitely something that is legitimate to be examined by the Michigan public, the people who vote for him, the donors who contribute to his campaign committees… This is a guy who could be Speaker of the House next year.”
- Hall, a Trump delegate in 2016, also has ties to election-deniers, J6ers, and their sympathizers.
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