Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway punched a man in the face at least three times just hours after the new president was sworn in, a witness claims.
Conway was reportedly attempting to break up a brawl involving two tuxedo-clad men at the exclusive Liberty Ball on Friday evening.
"But the two men wouldn't break up the fight and Conway apparently punched one of them in the face with closed fists at least three times, according to the stunned onlooker," the New York Daily News reported.
The report didn't indicate what sparked the fist fight.
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WND's request for comment from Conway hadn't been returned at the time of this report.
Fox Business correspondent Charlie Gasparino was a witness cited by the Daily News.
Gasparino claimed he met actor Scott Baio outside the ball and "a bunch of anarchist thugs began to descend on us." The "thugs" allegedly shouted, "Hey Chachi, are you fascist?"
He said one "thug" made "an aggressive move" toward him and Baio. That's when Gesparino claims he shoved the man away, and the alleged aggressor threatened him. So Gasparino's producer intervened and prevented the situation from escalating.
Baio appeared to confirm Gasparino's account in a tweet Saturday, adding that a person also threatened to throw urine on him.
Gasparino said "Part 2" of the brawl involved Conway.
Gasparino, who appears to have incorrectly referenced the Victory Ball rather than the Liberty Ball, posted the following account on Facebook Monday:
"[I]nside the ball we see a fight between two guys in tuxes and then suddenly out of nowhere came trump adviser Kellyanne Conway who began throwing some mean punches at one of the guys. Whole thing lasted a few mins no one was hurt except maybe the dude she smacked. Now I know why trump hired her. Btw I exaggerate none of this-cg."
Gasparino also tweeted Saturday: "Wild night for me & @schwartzbFBN witnessed @KellyannePolls in middle of a fight at Liberty ball; stopped a thug from attacking @ScottBaio."
Conway and Trump were WND's Duo of the Year for 2016.
Conway was hired by the Trump campaign for her polling expertise on July 1, 2016. As WND reported, her impact was felt immediately. The Trump campaign invested in what Conway called "conventional tactics" and the "fundamentals," stepping up its staffing, opening field offices in battleground states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, and building the kind of "ground game" that had been previously neglected.
Relying on her instincts as a pollster, Conway showed talent for identifying the Democrats’ vulnerabilities and precisely targeting them. She harnessed Trump’s fierce competitive instincts as Trump relentlessly took the offensive to “Crooked Hillary,” especially in the “Blue Wall” of the industrial Midwest which the pundits had mostly written off as a lost cause.
Before November, Conway evidently saw something few others did. “I predict that we will win,” she told the "Morning Joe" program on Oct. 31, telling the skeptical hosts Trump was “expanding our map” and appearing in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
What do YOU think? What's your favorite title for Kellyanne Conway? Sound off in today's WND poll!
After Trump won, and as the president-elect built his transition team, Conway became a target almost as much as Trump himself. Rather than honoring her as the first female to ever head a winning presidential campaign, she was accused by feminists of having “failed” women. Conway accepted a job as counselor to the president and is now part of the “senior staff” in the White House.
Conway has recently made news headlines with her criticism of left-leaning members of the media, saying they "ought to think about what they're really doing" when they mock President Trump.
"If they snark, if they roll their eyes, if their Twitter feed is filled with 92 percent anti-Trump tweets, they're not being reporters. They're being opinion columnists," Conway told Fox News' Sean Hannity during a White House interview. "They're being professional political hacks and pundits, and we have a right to call that out."
In fact, Conway may be so effective as a Trump counselor and spokeswoman that some in the media are now considering blacklisting her, refusing to include her comments in their news reporting.
GQ reported that Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, said the following in a recent podcast:
"[T]he logic is, this is a representative of the president. This is somebody who can speak for the Trump administration. But if we find that what Kellyanne Conway says is routinely or easily contradicted by Donald Trump, then that [rationale for interviewing her] disappears. Another reason to interview Kellyanne Conway is, our viewers want to understand how the Trump world thinks. But if the end result of an interview with her is more confusion about what the Trump world thinks, then that rationale evaporates ... No, it's not just lying or spin or somebody who is skilled in the political arts of putting the best case on things or not answering a question, which is a pretty basic method of doing politics. It's that when you are done listening to Kellyanne Conway, you probably understand less. That's a problem."
And other left-leaning reporters have since taken to Twitter to applaud Rosen's suggestion:
Also Tuesday, the New York Post reported that Conway is now under Secret Service protection due to death threats and receiving suspicious "white substances" at her home.
"Because of what the press is doing now to me, I have Secret Service protection," she told Hannity. "We have packages delivered to my house with white substances. That is a shame."