A Michigan lawmaker who has faced scrutiny over email threats he delivered in college—wherein he warned “the South will rise again”—was also once investigated by police over an alleged domestic violence episode, The Daily Beast has learned.
Police records reveal that State House Republican Leader Matt Hall was accused in 2019 of domestic assault and interfering in a 911 call. He was never charged.
Hall and his office did not return messages left by The Daily Beast. The woman who filed the report told us that negative reports about Hall aren’t true and that she “wouldn’t be in a relationship with him if this was the type of person he was.”
“I think members of the public should know Matt Hall is a committed public servant who wants to do what’s best for his family, constituents and the people of Michigan,” she said.
But some critics are questioning whether Hall—who once invited former President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to spread election fraud lies before a Michigan House committee—is suitable to lead a state GOP already in disarray. (Kristina Karamo, the election-denying chair of the Michigan GOP, refuses to acknowledge her recent ouster.)
Hall and other lawmakers return to the state Capitol Wednesday and face a House temporarily split between Democrats and Republicans and the specter of deadlock.
“House Democrats have a choice to make: Together we can forge compromise and achieve the most productive months of the session, or the House Democrat leadership can take their ball and go home until next spring,” Hall said in November, after two state reps won mayoral races and Dems lost a slim majority. Special elections to fill their seats are slated for April.
“We have to work together,” Hall told a radio show last week, warning that Democrats could face opposition “if they try to ram through” legislation as they did last session, with pro-union and other progressive bills.
Michigan House Oversight Committee Chairman Matt Hall.
As the House weighed another bill, which prohibits citizens convicted of domestic violence from possessing firearms for eight years after their sentencing, one news outlet highlighted Hall’s emailed threats to a college classmate of his then girlfriend in 2001. (Hall was among the majority of Republicans to vote against the legislation.)
In September, the liberal-leaning American Independent Foundation resurfaced police reports with Hall’s alleged threats: “YOU BETTER NOT GO TO THE CHRISTMAS PARTY TOMORROW NIGHT! JUST A WORD OF ADVICE!! THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN AND WE DON’T LIKE YOUR KIND TREATING LADIES LIKE [redacted] WITHOUT DIGNITY,” he wrote in one message.
“WE ARE GOING TO IMPOSE OUR SOUTHERN WAYS ON YOU! I’VE GOT A SHOTGUN RIFLE AND I JUST PUT A BULLET IN IT WITH YOUR NAME ON IT!” Hall’s email continued.
Now The Daily Beast has obtained police documents from a 2019 incident involving another girlfriend.
According to an incident report with the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office, Hall and the woman were driving to Indiana one evening in September 2019 “for some type of sports betting” when he became angry and smashed her phone screen.
That day, the report alleges, Hall had been running late from his Lansing office and texted her to make sure she was ready to go. The couple decided to drive the girlfriend’s vehicle. While at a truck stop soon after, Hall “began looking all over in the car for his money to be used on his gambling trip and became very upset when he could not find it,” the report says.
The girlfriend began navigating the drive back to their home to get the funds and they realized they were going the wrong way, leading Hall to use an authorized vehicle turnaround.
“He was driving fast and scaring [her],” the report states. “She became upset and asked him to stop driving in such a manner and just skip gambling for the night as he was very angry and stated he did not have time and had to get there in order to get his bets in at a certain time.”
“At some point during the altercation, [she] began to record Matt on her phone,” the document adds. “He told her to stop recording him and then he forcefully grabbed her phone out of her hand while she was still holding it. He used enough force to break the screen on her phone. He then told her she was not going to record him.”
The report says that the woman used Hall’s phone to dial 911 but he ended the call. When dispatch called back, he didn’t answer. In recordings she made during the incident, cops say, the woman asked Hall to take her home and informed him that he broke her phone.
Hall parked in the driveway, got in his own car, and left. “I asked [her] if she would cooperate with prosecution,” the officer noted in their report. “It does appear that she is interested in assisting with prosecution. She emailed the two phone recordings she had.”
“While doing this, I suggested that it might be better for her to find another place to stay at least for the evening. She decided to travel to Grand Rapids where her family is and she retrieved her puppy and loaded a few things in the car. I waited there in the driveway until she drove away.”
The officer’s report noted that a warrant request would be forwarded to the county prosecutor’s office for suggested charges of domestic assault, malicious destruction of property, and interfering with a 911 call.
Then-President Donald Trump is greeted by U.S. Representatives from Michigan Bill Huizenga, John Moolenaar, and Jack Bergman, Michigan State Rep. Matt Hall and Former Michigan State Attorney General Bill Schuette during a 2019 trip to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
When the cop interviewed the woman days later, a supplemental police report states, she appeared to backtrack on some of her claims and said her phone’s screen protector had cracked but the device itself was OK.
She said Hall touching her while grabbing her phone “was incidental” and that he “did not intend to hurt her in any way.” She added that Hall’s “driving and his anxiousness” had triggered a memory of her son nearly being killed in a car wreck and that “her reaction was not appropriate to the way he was driving.”
The woman “stated that after having more time to think about the incident and talking it over with her brother, she does not wish to have Matthew prosecuted for anything and she believes that she overreacted to the incident as a result of the prior trauma,” the report adds. “She stated she has not talked to Matt about what happened, but she believes she owes him an apology.”
When reached by The Daily Beast, the woman who dialed 911 said that before the incident, her teenage son was in a major car accident with life-changing injuries. “I arrived on scene as first responders pulled my unconscious son out of the vehicle just before it caught fire,” she said. “I can without a doubt tell you this was the worst moment of my life.”
This trauma, she added, led to anxiety about being in cars and resulted in her being most comfortable driving herself.
“Since that traumatic day, I have dealt with moments that bring back the vivid memories and emotions of that accident,” she said. “These emotions are not just strong, but often unexpected, and resulted in the incident that Matt Hall is being targeted for today.”
The evening she and Hall drove to Indiana, she said, she wasn’t prepared to be a passenger. “I was not in the best mindset. I was having a traumatic response that particular day unlike anything I had ever experienced before. Matt was trying to help me, and I couldn’t understand in that moment,” she continued. “That is why charges were not filed.
“Matt and I were able to work through this together and I am thankful for Matt's love, calm demeanor, patience and understanding.”
Ayanna Neal, an attorney and former prosecutor of felony domestic violence crimes, reviewed the police report but has no connection to the incident.
Neal said it’s extremely common for domestic violence accusers to recant, blame themselves, or refuse to participate in prosecution because it could impact their incomes and housing and they don’t want to see the person they love thrown in jail. “There’s just so many factors that play into, frequently women, not wanting to participate in prosecution,” she said.
People are especially more hesitant to come forward concerning behavior if it relates to elected officials and people in powerful positions, Neal told The Daily Beast.
Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, told The Daily Beast that the 2019 incident should still be of concern for voters.
“This happened when this guy was in the Legislature,” said Timmer, who is a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, a PAC founded by anti-Trump conservatives. “It’s recent, and it shows a problem with judgment and anger and behavior that I think is definitely something that is legitimate to be examined by the Michigan public, the people who vote for him, the donors who contribute to his campaign committees… This is a guy who could be Speaker of the House next year.”
“This is a sign of the Trumpification of the party,” Timmer added. “The problems that people are seeing with normalization of previously intolerable behavior.”
Hall, a Trump delegate in 2016, also has ties to election-deniers, J6ers, and their sympathizers.
Campaign finance records show his PAC, the Matt Hall Majority Fund, donated $5,000 to state Rep. Angela Rigas, who proudly joined the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.
His fund also shelled out $5,000 to House candidate Dave Morgan, who praised the protesters who “peacefully” showed up that day on Facebook and has also shared an election fraud video from conspiracy theorist and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Meanwhile, Hall supported failed state attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno, who peddled election fraud lies and was charged last year with tampering with voting machines.
In 2018, Hall’s “South will rise again” emails made news when Hall was running for the House.
MLive.com reported that Hall’s alma mater, Western Michigan University, disciplined him after a Washington College student filed a complaint about receiving threatening messages, prompting police in Maryland to open an investigation.
The Michigan news site’s headline read: “Republican candidate says he learned from online harassment incident.”
At the time, Hall said his comments had nothing to do with race and his target was white.
“I sent two nonsensical emails while I was drinking to another white male over a girl,” Hall told MLive.com. “It was wrong and I regret it. What I did is accepted responsibility, apologized and the matter was dropped.”
“It’s not racist,” Hall added. “It was a nonsensical, drunken email. That’s all it was. When I read it today, it doesn’t make any sense.”
The news report arrived after Michigan for Traditional Values—a nonprofit Hall called a “dark money group”—sent campaign mailers asking voters, “In today’s age of random violence and school shootings, can we trust someone with Matt Hall's temperament?”
“It’s obvious that these are corporate donors who want to protect the status quo in Lansing,” Hall said in response to the flyers.
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