Crime & Safety

Conservative Blogger Jim Hoft Questioned by Ladue Police

Hoft was questioned after a 70-year-old complained to police that an unknown individual told him: "If you vote for Obama, I will kill you."

Jim Hoft, conservative commentator and editor of The Gateway Pundit, says he was profiled by Ladue police because of his conservative affiliations.

Hoft wrote about the incident on his website and was also interviewed by The Dana Show, a conservative radio program.  

Hoft said police questioned him after a 70-year-old man reported an incident in which he was harassed because of an Obama bumper sticker at a Schnucks parking lot.

Ladue Police Detective Chris Armstrong said that, on Sept. 20, the department received a call about the incident. Armstrong said the victim told police that a man approached him at the Schnucks parking lot on Clayton Road and told him, “If you vote for Obama, I will kill you.”

Armstrong said the victim gave police a description of the man who threatened him and police made a composite sketch. That sketch, detectives found, matched the description of a speaker who attended a convention for conservative activists at the same time at the St. Louis Frontenac Hilton Hotel. That speak was Hoft.

Hoft said two weeks after the convention, two Ladue Police officers came to his house and asked him if he could go with them for questioning.

“The police said they discovered there was a conservative conference at the hotel across the street from Schnucks that weekend,” Hoft wrote on his blog. “When they saw my photos on the Internet, they approached the man and he said I looked like the man who attacked him. They still have no video of the ‘attack.’ The police asked me several times if I had attacked the 70-year-old Obama supporter. I told them I was with friends that night.”

Armstrong said Hoft voluntarily agreed to be interviewed about the incident and at no moment was he under arrest.

“The only reason that my name was brought up was because I attended that conference,” Hoft told Patch. “I just think that was profiling.”

Hoft said that his brother, Joe, who was visiting St. Louis from Hong Kong, also received a call from police about the incident. 

Police couldn’t release any more details about the incident because it was an ongoing investigation, Armstrong said.


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