"I Drag Him, I Throw Him to the Side": Right-Wing Activist Claims "Self-Defense" In Attack on Trans Woman

Cop's verdict: "He's fuckin' lying, dude!"

By Erica C. Barnett

A fired local TV reporter who now makes videos for Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk's youth group, Turning Point USA, admitted punching and dragging a trans woman along a sidewalk near a temporary migrant encampment earlier this year, telling Officer Nicholas Burgess he was acting purely in "self-defense" after a "mob" of people tried to prevent him from doing "my job as a journalist."

PubliCola reported on the incident, in which multiple witnesses say ex-KOMO news staffer Jonathan Choe repeatedly punched the woman and dragged her along the sidewalk, ripping out her hair, in April. Since then, we obtained body camera footage of Choe's conversation with police through a records request.

The video shows that immediately after Burgess hung up with Choe, the other officer in the car shouted out, "He's fuckin' lying, dude!" Burgess responded, "I don't know" before turning off his camera, ending the tape. Burgess later wrote that he found Choe's claim of self-defense "plausible," but his partner, after listening to Choe's version of events, clearly did not.

"As a journalist, what I do is I show up and get video and do interviews," Choe told Burgess, who responded to Choe's 911 call from his car and put him on speakerphone. "And as I was at the press conference, about two, three minutes in, I'm recording, and then the crowd turns on me after they notice what I was doing. And a lot of folks in this crowd don't like my kind of reporting, because I tell the truth, so they basically said I wasn't welcome there." 

As we reported earlier this year, multiple witnesses reported that Choe pulled out a retractable baton and wielded it in a threatening manner in the vicinity of a Angolan migrant who was living at the temporary camp near the Garfield Playfield. The woman Choe punched and dragged told us she put her body between Choe and the man but did not touch him. A heavily edited video Choe later posted on X showed him taunting a person holding their hands in the air, calling them a “little soy boy” and repeatedly threatening to call the police.

Later, according to several witnesses' official statements to police, he punched the woman in the face and dragged her by her hair, ripping out a chunk of it before grabbing her phone and running away, dropping his baton in the process. The witnesses who told police what happened included a Parks Department employee who happened to be working nearby.

In his call, Choe appears confident the police are on his side, telling him he was just trying to report on what was happening when a "Hispanic kid" "bumped" him, forcing Choe to attack her in self-defense. (In addition to mentioning the woman's ethnicity three times in a seven-minute call, Choe consistently misgendered her.) 

So, Choe continued, "I'm trying to clear the situation. I push this guy away. My hand gets tangled on this guy, so I'm on the ground. I'm walking away from this guy, and this guy's on the ground, so I'm pushing him off, and then I leave." 

Choe—who told Burgess he has sent SPD "numerous hours" of video in the past—emphasized that he was definitely capable of "beat[ing] up" the woman he punched and dragged. "If I wanted to beat him up, if I wanted to attack him, I easily could have, but I left the scene," Choe said. He added that he wanted to press charges against "at least the Hispanic kid."

"I'm sick of being bullied," Choe continued. "I get assaulted at these things all the time." After Burgess suggested his version of events was pretty confusing, and told him the woman said Choe had assaulted her, Choe chuckled loudly. "That's hilarious," he told the officer. "Yeah, if 'assault' means I defended myself, because they instigated everything. Last I checked, in America, I'm allowed to defend myself."

Choe appeared keen to make sure the cops knew he was a serious journalist with real credentials—not some random weirdo wielding an iPhone and a retractable weapon at a refugee camp. "I'm trying to do my job as a journalist. I have a long history in the city. I have a full body of work. And, you know, people are on the far left accuse me of all kinds of things, and they now try to be the victim the moment I defend myself. ... I'm gonna stand for truth."

Choe never posted any evidence that he was assaulted. He told the officers he put his phone away during those critical moments, "so the actual self-defense piece is not recorded." This is par for the course: Videos from other events Choe has attended show him instigating conflicts by rapidly invading people's personal space, then running away while threatening to call the police or claiming someone assaulted him, often with their phone.

Choe did not respond to a request for comment. The last time we reached out to Choe about this incident, in April, he responded by boasting about his follower count on X and his new position at Kirk's organization, which he described as a "national cable channel."