The two Trump campaign staffers who got into a brief physical altercation with a staffer at Arlington National Cemetery last week have been identified as deputy campaign manager Justin Caporale and Michel Picard, a member of the former president's advance team. Named by NPR, Caporale is a former aide to Melania Trump who was project manager of the Women for America First rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. After leaving the White House, he initially worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Neither he nor Picard have responded to requests for comment.
Caporale and Picard reportedly pushed past a cemetery employee who tried to block former President Trump from filming in Arlington's Section 60, home to the graves of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Trump was at Arlington at the invitation of Gold Star families to honor the third anniversary of the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing in Afghanistan. Some families say Trump had their permission to film in this section, but Arlington has rules against it and federal law prohibits election-related activities at military cemeteries. On top of that, at least one family isn't happy their loved one's grave appears in a Trump TikTok video viewed more than 11 million times, per the Washington Post.
Though a police report was filed, the ANC employee declined to press charges. The Army said she worked to de-escalate the situation so as to not upset the families gathered to mourn. The Trump campaign said she was "clearly suffering from a mental health episode" and "decided to physically block members of President Trump's team during a very solemn ceremony." The campaign vowed to release footage, but no footage has come and in recent days, Trump has claimed the altercation never happened and was invented by his political rival Vice President Kamala Harris. (More Arlington National Cemetery stories.)
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