Trump-supporting GOP official indicted for strangling woman with computer cable
To quote an extremely unwise president, when the GOP sends its politicians to state legislatures, “they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Kentucky state Representative Robert S. Goforth (R) does not appear to be one of the good people.
At least that’s what a grand jury determined last Friday, when it indicted Goforth, a former Republican gubernatorial candidate, on one count of first-degree strangulation and one count of assault in the fourth degree, as initially reported in The Corbin Times-Tribune.
the 44-year-old Goforth is accused of strangling a woman with an ethernet cable until she was gasping for breath and threatening to “hog-tie” her in a dispute over his efforts to force her to unlock her mobile phone according to a police report that the local newspaper reviewed.
“The alleged incident had left bruises on her leg and marks on her neck and arms, police said, and she was only able to leave the residence after she promised to open her cellphone for Goforth,” The Washington Post reported.
Ironically, Goforth had voted for a Kentucky bill that passed earlier in his term that increased penalties for strangulation charges and made prosecution of those charges as a Class D felony much easier in the state.
Predictably, Republican officials in Kentucky did not want to comment directly on the case involving one of their own.
“’While we reserve comment on this specific situation, the House Majority Caucus unequivocally denounces any form of domestic violence and has zero tolerance for it or its perpetrators,’ Kentucky House Speaker David Osborne (R) said in a statement at the time, according to WKMS. ‘A society that values human life must also condemn domestic abuse,'” The Washington Post article on the matter states.
Kentucky Democrats were not so sanguine about the incident.
“State Representative Goforth should have resigned back in April and his party should have taken action against him when he refused to do so,” Marisa McNee, a spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party, said in a statement, according to the Herald-Leader. “This is not the first time a victim of Mr. Goforth’s violent assaults has come forward. Republican Leadership has ignored this for far too long, it is time for them to take action. Goforth needs to go,” The Post reported.
Goforth’s opponent in the November election was equally adamant that the GOP legislator both resign and drop out of the upcoming race, as he posted a photo of the alleged Kentucky strangler on his Facebook feed.=
It looks like it’s time that Rep. Goforth cuts his cords with Kentucky politics altogether and goes forth to fight his battle to stay out of prison.
Let’s hope that whatever was on his alleged victim’s mobile phone was worth the destruction of his political career to obtain.
Follow Vinnie Longobardo on Twitter.
Original reporting by Teo Armus at The Washington Post.
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