The Denver Post Covers the ‘Karate Chop’

Michael Riley got former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) on the phone to ask about the just-revealed assault charges against Marcus Epstein, the executive director of his Team America PAC.

He said Monday that he didn’t know about the incident until it surfaced on the website of One People’s Project, an anti-racism group.

“I’m assuming that the only thing that makes (the incident) even newsworthy is the fact that it comes in the context of the Sotomayor thing,” Tancredo said. “I don’t have any day-to-day control over the organization.”

It’s true that Tancredo stepped away from Team America PAC for a long time, but the arrest occured in July 2007 and the then-presidential candidate kept Epstein in his circle. Epstein was the go-between between Tancredo and Youth for Western Civilization, which brought the former congressman a new burst of attention when it scheduled campus speeches that were shouted down and shut down by students. One People’s Project claims that its discovery of the arrest and plea bargain records was unrelated to Tancredo’s position on Sonia Sotomayor — and they did post the documents before Sotomayor was nominated.