Media Spin: Full Police Audio of Leonard Leo Protester’s Arrest Exposes Bogus Narrative

Mainstream media outlets reported Thursday on a lawsuit claiming that two Maine police officers wrongfully arrested a left-wing political protester “at the behest of” a conservative legal activist in Northeast Harbor, with the Bangor Daily News writing that the claim was “bolstered” by the dashcam audio.

It appears likely that two Maine police departments will pay Eli Durand-McDonnell $150,000 to settle his claim that he was wrongfully arrested for disorderly conduct after he screamed obscenities at Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo, his wife, and their 11-year-old daughter.

The media has zealously adopted Durand-McDonnell’s narrative of events: that his civil rights were violated at the command of a powerful elite merely for joining a political protest.

However, the full dashcam audio, which captures Leo’s conversation with a Bar Harbor police officer and a Mount Desert police officer concerning the behavior of Durand-McDonnell, paints quite a different picture.

Rather than bolster the claim that Leo asked for Durand-McDonnell’s arrest, the full audio shows that Leo had tolerated four weeks of increasingly acrimonious protests and had only involved the police when he feared for the safety of his wife and 11-year-old daughter. And even at that point, Leo never demands or asks that police arrest Durand-McDonnell.

Instead, he explains the events that had transpired over the past two weeks following the overturning of Roe v. Wade and why he fears for the safety of his family.

[RELATED: Bar Harbor May Pay $150k to Oberlin Grad Who Harassed Leonard Leo and His Family…]

Leo does tell the police officers that he thinks it’s time to press charges against Durand-McDonnell, but that’s not an action that involves an immediate arrest.

On several occasions during the 20-minute conversation, Leo questions whether arresting Durand-McDonnell is appropriate. Leo even says that he has questioned whether the best course of action is to just have a conversation with Durand-McDonnell.

While the mainstream media, including the Bangor Daily News and the New Yorker, have portrayed the arrest as some all-powerful wealthy elite commanding the police to snuff out political speech, the truth is much different. The truth is that veteran police officers heard the concerns of a scared father and took the action they believed was appropriate.

Here’s an annotated partial transcript of the 20-minute conversation between Leo and the police officers:

“I’m happy to hear your counsel, of course, but I think it’s time for us to press charges,” Leo tells the officers.

Leo proceeds to explain to the officers the incident that, after two weeks of intense protesting, has led him to consider pressing charges against one of the hundreds of protesters that had been demonstrating outside his home.

Here’s what Leo told the cops regarding the events earlier in the day that had brought him to that point:

“[Durand-McDonnell] pulls up to us, it’s between 4:30 and 4:45, there’s someone driving, he’s in the passenger’s seat, he yells out to us, pardon the language, ‘You’re a f***king a***ole, you’re going to hell,’ and then he looks at my 11-year-old daughter and my wife, and says, ‘And you’re all going with him,’ and he just pulls away. This isn’t the first time we’ve had run-ins with him… When I was talking to [a neighbor]… he pulled up his vehicle, started screaming the same kind of thing. ‘F**k you, you’re an a***ole’ whatever, then he drives off. He’s driven by here on numerous occasions honking his horn, flipping the bird to my staff. One night, in particular,… we’re washing off all the chalk they put all over the street and he drove by twice and flipped the finger at them and yelled an expletive. So he’s routinely been just trying to intimidate and harass us. For me, personally, he crossed the line when he basically did that with my 11-year-old child in our presence. Because, I have to be honest with you, the man looks unstable. He looks hateful. He looks really angry. And he’s really starting to scare me… He’s a young man. He’s not some little kid. He’s graduated from college. He’s a big boy. And something’s going to happen. He’s got a lot of hate under that. I mean, they way he looked at us and the way he yelled at us from that car, he scared the heck out of my daughter. Okay, so, there’s a limit. I mean, if he wants to put a bullet between my two eyes. Fine. Let him do it. But I can’t have him dealing with my family that way.”

“I feel like I’m getting stalked by the guy,” he said.

Leo then explains a second incident, unrelated to Durand-McDonnell, in which other protesters found him out for a walk and attempted to block him from returning to his property by holding a banner across the road and hollering at him.

After explaining the escalating behavior of the protesters that culminated with him calling the police, Leo gets into whether the conduct has crossed the line from protected political speech to become harassment and intimidation.

“We can have a debate about whether what they’re doing is an exercise of their first amendment rights. You’re not allowed to obstruct public ways. You’re not allowed to engage in intimidating behavior. Just so we’re clear here: This is no longer a political protest. When they have “F**k Leo” signs, that’s not a political protest. When their Twitter and Facebook posts talk about ‘Get out, you don’t belong Here, you’re not welcome in this neighborhood.’ That’s not a political protest anymore. That’s harassment and intimidation intended to drive someone out of the community. I don’t know… I mean, I could have a debate, and I could take both sides of it, as to whether or not that’s protected expression, and so, I don’t know the answer.”

At this point, Leo has only explained the situation and his internal debate over what to do about it. He’s spent weeks tolerating the right of protesters to demonstrate on public property, but the threat he perceived to his wife and child, which was the direct result of targeted harassment from Durand-McDonnell, changed his thinking. Still, at no point has he asked the police to detain or arrest Durand-McDonnell.

Leo then tells the cops that, in his opinion, the protests, and Durand-McDonnell’s conduct in particular, has reached the point where it is no longer “peaceful protests.”

At that point, one of the officers says: “That’s disorderly conduct.”

Leo responds: “Yeah, that’s disorderly conduct. And that’s pretty much what’s happened now for two weekends in a row. So that’s, you know, that’s the situation. As to what happened yesterday and what’s been happening with this gentleman, Eli, I’ve kind of reached my limit. I mean, I feel like they’re only intensifying, and I feel like they’re just running us down. And it’s starting to grate on my family. And I feel as though it’s time to take some action, personally.”

Again, the action Leo is referring to here is pressing charges, not the arrest of Durand-McDonnell.

The officer replies: “Well, I think with this Eli, if he was yelling expletives up at you on Main Street, that’s disorderly conduct. I think we can charge him with that. We’ll need statements from everybody.”

At that point, Leo says he and his wife will be happy to provide statements. Then the officers decide that the other issues with protesters will be handled as separate witness reports. After some brief chit chat about a recent garden show in the area, the officer again underscores the escalation from peaceful protest into something else.

“I know you’re frustrated. I understand that when they are getting to the point where they’re singling out you and your family and calling you names on Main Street — vulgar names — that’s above and beyond,” the officer states.

The officer then asks about other protesters. Leo then relates one of the earliest protests at his home where protesters insisted that they have a right to block Leo’s driveway and prevent cars from entering the public way. At that point, Leo’s security personnel called the police, who arrived and explained to the protesters the legal boundaries of their protest, that is, what is and is not allowed.

Leo then explains the peaceful means that he considered to limit the protesters access to the area around his home, including parking vehicles in the public areas where the protesters had set up.

“I don’t want to do that when they’re standing there, because I just think that’s going to create confrontation,” he said.

The conversation then returns to Durand-McDonnell.

“But anyways, back to the details, this one guy, I think he’s a menace,” Leo says. “And I actually have become fearful of our safety. I really feel like this is a guy who is going to be in jail someday, and sooner rather than later. So we’re happy to give statements to the effect of what happened today.”

“Well, a lot of times I think probably you have the sense that, you know, if you just let it be and don’t poke it, it’ll go away. But this isn’t going away,” the officer said.

“It doesn’t look like it,” Leo replies.

“No, doesn’t look like it,” the officer says. “I thought maybe after a few weeks, after the decision was made, things would kind of settle.”

“Well, they know we live here permanently now. And they don’t want us here. They just don’t want us here,” Leo says.

“That’s not for them to decide,” the officer says.

“Well, it’s not, and it won’t be. But, you know, they have to respect the law. That’s all. That’s all. Sorry to draw people into this,” Leo says.

“Nope, you’re well within your rights,” says the officer.

Leo then thanks the officers and acknowledges the difficulty of being a cop in a small town where you know most of the people you’re interacting with.

“I’m sorry, I just feel like we’ve crossed the point here. If I’m wrong, look, I trust you guys,” Leo says.

“No, disorderly conduct is offensive words or gestures that are offensive. You don’t have to be warned for disorderly conduct. So those things that he said to you on Main Street today, that you’re a f***ing a****le and going to Hell and wife and kid, too — that’s disorderly conduct. It’s offensive to you, and whoever else probably was on the street and heard it. So what we’re probably going to do is arrest him, take him to jail, so that he has bail conditions not to be in orr near [Leo’s home]. If I had it my way, he wouldn’t be allowed in Northeast Harbor, but bail commissioners don’t do that often, all the time,” the officer said.

At that point, Leo almost seems to lament that his conflict with the protesters has reached the point where law enforcement needs to be involved.

“I would have loved to have sat down with him four weeks ago and talked to him, and I actually was going to, but after what he did to the staff, I thought about it, and I said, I can’t do that. I can’t. I don’t know. Maybe when you arrest him– I don’t know what to do. I feel bad for the guy. I think he’s a genuinely hurting guy. But at the same time, he just seems really off-kilter. So I don’t know whether I should try to talk to him or–“

“He’s just gonna yell at you [unintelligible]. And the people that are out there are going to egg him on to do it because they’re, you know, some of the stuff I heard them say, it’s, you know, guys come on. I was here the night Susan Collins was here. I was across the street. I hung out with those guys just so I could figure out what their deal was.”

“I just gotta tell you, that evening was one of the biggest damn mistakes I ever made in my life. I’m never having a politician in this house again. That was a big mistake,” said Leo. “I thought I was being gracious by having someone over for a reception. Never again.”

At that point, the conversation ends, the police officers leave Leo’s house, and the rest of the incident is captured on video recorded by a local liberal blogger. The police approach Durand-McDonnell and place him under arrest calmly.

The Transcript Undermines the Bogus Media Narrative

Although the lawsuit Durand-McDonnell filed and recent media reports have suggested that he was arrested at the “behest” of Leo and only because he was protesting, the full audio of the interaction makes clear that that is a false narrative.

Durand-McDonnell was not arrested at the “behest” of Leo. Nor was he arrested for holding political signs or engaging in political speech.

Durand-McDonnell was arrested because a longtime police officer took witness statements from two residents and concluded that the conduct described in those statements rose to the level of disorderly conduct.

Contrary to the idea that Leo asked for the arrest, the full audio shows that Leo was reluctant to pursue that course of action, that he had considered calmer ways of addressing the protesters’ concerns and de-escalating the situation.

The decision to arrest Leo was made by the law enforcement officers after they assessed the situation, and they counseled Leo that an arrest would be the best and safest way to de-escalate the situation.

Arguments of about law enforcement’s decision to conduct that arrest will explore the finer details of Maine’s disorderly conduct statute and whether the proper conditions were met. But the media is not accurately portraying the perspective of a scared father who was subject to weeks of harassment and escalating mob intimidation.