Suspect instructed Rep. Maxwell Frost: ‘We’re going to deport your variety’ earlier than assault at Sundance, police say | EUROtoday

A 28-year-old Utah man is in custody after allegedly assaulting a Democratic congressman at a Sundance Film Festival occasion, telling him, “We are going to deport you and your kind,” police mentioned.

Rep. Maxwell Frost tweeted on Saturday night time that he had been attacked by a person “who told me that Trump was going to deport me before he punched me in the face. He was heard screaming racist remarks as he drunkenly ran off.”

Frost went on to thank the Park City police for arresting suspect Christian Joel Young.

According to authorities, Young is dealing with expenses of aggravated housebreaking, making an attempt/assaulting an elected official, and easy assault.

The incident occurred on the High West Distillery in Park City on Friday night time. During the altercation, Young is accused of assaulting Frost and his good friend.

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Bar staff told investigators that Young had earlier been denied entry to the venue after being told it was an invitation-only event. At one point, Young allegedly attempted to scale a perimeter fence in an ill-fated attempt to get into the venue.

Police documents accuse Young of having “weird conversations and comments referring to… race,” which had been directed at Frost’s good friend. During the dialog, Young was grabbing the pair “like he was hugging them around their necks.”

He then instructed the congressman, “We are going to deport you and your kind.” That was adopted by an unspecified racial slur and a punch directed at Frost, police say.

In addition to allegedly punching Frost, Young can be accused of pushing the Democrat’s good friend “against the bar.”

Young then tried to flee by means of the gang earlier than he was shortly apprehended by the bar’s safety and one other patron.

Young additionally instructed Frost’s good friend, “You are the kind we are going to deport. You’re being deported,” the paperwork state. The suspect is described as changing into extra agitated when Frost’s good friend tried to finish the dialog “because it was becoming inappropriate and racially charged.”

During questioning, authorities say Young couldn’t keep in mind his personal identify however did keep in mind being served drinks on the venue, one thing the bar workers later confirmed. He had a Sundance Film Festival cross on his individual on the time of his arrest, but it surely was in another person’s identify, police mentioned. Young mentioned he didn’t know the place the cross got here from.

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A decide in Utah has ordered Young held with out bail as he’s thought-about a flight threat who “would constitute a substantial danger” to the group.

Frost, who campaigned on gun management and Medicare for all and gained high-profile endorsements from progressive U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, beat out a crowded forged of Democrats who ran for the seat in Florida’s tenth Congressional District, which incorporates the Orlando space.

He later grew to become the primary Gen Z member of Congress when he was elected in 2022. He was reelected in 2024.

Despite President Donald Trump and his acolytes’ fixed claims that these on the opposite aspect of the political spectrum are the supply of violence, the Anti-Defamation League discovered that from 2022 by means of 2024, all the 61 political killings within the U.S. had been dedicated by right-wing extremists. That modified on the primary day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 individuals by driving his truck by means of a crowded New Orleans avenue earlier than being fatally shot by police.

Bruce Hoffman, who research terrorism at Georgetown University, mentioned that in trendy historical past, the correct has been chargeable for extra political assaults on individuals than the left. He mentioned that’s as a result of left-wing radicals usually tend to goal property moderately than individuals, and since the intense proper boasts organizations comparable to militias.

He added that after Trump pardoned greater than 1,500 individuals convicted of crimes through the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol to overturn his election loss, “there’s a belief in certain quarters that, if you engage in violence, the slate can be wiped clean.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.