Lafayette College Student Arrested For Faking Attack By Trump Supporter

There is a story out of my old stomping grounds of Lafayette, Louisiana (where I lived during my judicial clerkship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for Judge W. Eugene Davis). A female student at the University of Louisiana reported that she was attacked by a man in a white Donald Trump cap and another men. She said that the men hit her with a metal object, ripped off her hijab and took both her wallet and the traditional Muslim head-covering. The incident caused a national outrage but it now turns out that she made up the entire incident after police became suspicious of her accounts.

The 18-year-old woman of Middle Eastern descent said that the men “were saying ugly stuff to her” but gave no other information.

Many saw the incident as proof of anti-Muslim movement given voice among supporters of Donald Trump. Yet police were struck by inconsistencies and generalities in her account: “The victim describes the suspects as white males, but has not given a definitive clothing description. There were no witnesses or video surveillance on the scene.”

She reportedly confessed to the lie.

However, there is no indication of a charge for filing a false report and the University of Louisiana said that federal law prevented the release of any information on any internal actions to be taken against the students.