Nuff Said
U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Amarillo, threatened to beat up a state trooper and take down the Carson County sheriff in the next election after deputies detained the congressman at a rodeo outside of Amarillo in July, according to a sheriff’s incident report released Friday night.
The report said that Jackson screamed profanities at deputies who were trying to clear the area for emergency medical workers to attend to a teenager who was having a seizure. Deputies asked the former White House physician to step back four times before they put Jackson in handcuffs, according to their reports.
After the congressman was released, he demanded Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry call him and investigate the incident. During that call, Terry, a Republican, said that Jackson warned him that he would “bury me in the next election.”
According to The Texas Tribune, the report states that Jackson was drinking backstage at the White Deer rodeo. After the teenager collapsed, the report states that Jackson was among the group that crowded around the teenager, prompting authorities to try to clear the area.
The congressman later told Terry that in his attempt to care for the patient, he thought it was safe to put a gumball in the patient’s mouth as a way to elevate her blood sugar. But in an exchange included in the report between Terry and White Deer EMS provider Kimberly Thomas, Thomas says that the gum presents a choking hazard to patients having a seizure, and that most gum is sugar free and thus would not address low blood sugar.
A 2021 investigative report by the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Defense found that Jackson disparaged employees, engaged in “alcohol-related misconduct” and made sexual comments about a female employee under his supervision.
The report also found that Jackson took sleeping pills during official travel and cited witness testimony that he was drunk while on duty during a presidential trip to Argentina. But the inspector general was unable to corroborate those claims and noted that there was no policy against the use of Ambien during long overseas flights.
TEXAS TRIBUNE AND THE DAILY BEAST
