SOUTH BEND, Ind. –– The recent accusations of sexual assault against South Bend Mayor and Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg are “completely false,” says his accuser.
Hunter Kelly is a college student at Ferris State in Michigan. He’s an openly gay Republican who says he follows conservative activist Jacob Wohl on Instagram and that Wohl was someone he looked up to as a conservative.
Kelly told WOOD in Michigan that he had gotten a message on Instagram from Wohl about possibly coming to Washington, D.C. Wohl told him he’d like to get Kelly’s perspective as a gay conservative for a new piece he was working on.
“I had three days off and I was like, ‘Yeah’,” Kelly said. “I’ll come get some experience in politics and come do some research with you guys. It sounds great.”
Kelly flew out to D.C and met up with Wohl and Jack Burkman at Burkman’s mansion. He said it was not long after that he saw an article online that said Kelly was accusing Pete Buttigieg of sexually assaulting him in a hotel. They even forced him to sign papers confirming the accusations, he said.
“I didn’t want to put up a fight and get thrown out on to the street in the middle of Arlington, Virginia at 3:30 in the morning where I had no way to get anywhere,” said Kelly. “It had been about 45 minutes of me saying I wanted to leave and I wanted to go.”
Wohl and Burkman are refuting Kelly’s statements saying that he was not coerced in anyway to accuse Buttigieg of rape.
Kelly is back home and hopes to get back into his normal routine. Buttigieg is dismissing the whole story as “dirty politics.”
(PHOTO: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
