The man behind Project 2025, a right-wing policy manifesto that calls for a sharp increase in immigrant deportations if Donald Trump is elected, said that about 20 years ago, his neighbor’s dog was barking and was bothering him. He told his university colleagues that he had killed his neighbor’s dog with a shovel. That’s what his family said, according to former colleagues who spoke to the Guardian.
Kevin Roberts, now president of the Heritage Foundation, is said to have told colleagues and dinner guests that he killed his neighbor’s pit bull around 2004, when he was still working as a little-known history professor at New Mexico State University. There is.
“What I remember about his talk was that he was talking in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including myself, and the neighbor’s dog was barking pretty persistently and, you know, “He was trying not to wake up the baby and probably the parents, so he said, ‘I lost it in a way and picked up a shovel and killed the dog.’ The problem is over,” said Kenneth Hammond, then head of the university’s history department.
Two others, a professor and his spouse, remember hearing similar stories firsthand at dinner parties at Roberts’ home. Three other professors also said they heard the story at the time from colleagues who said they heard it directly from Roberts.
No one remembers Roberts, who worked as an assistant professor at the university from 2003 to 2005, saying that the dog he allegedly killed was actively threatening him or his family.
In a statement to the Guardian, Roberts denied ever killing the dog with a shovel. He did not respond to questions about why he claimed multiple people had told him that he was.
“This is a patently false and unsubstantiated story with no evidence whatsoever. In 2004, I was gardening with my young daughter when my neighbor’s pit bull, who was on a leash, tried to jump over the fence and into the backyard. Thankfully, the owner arrived in time and was able to restrain the animal before it became violent and attacked us.
At the time, people who claimed to have heard Professor Roberts talk about killing the dog said they were so alarmed by the apparent admission that they did not question him. Professor Roberts was a conservative Republican who was already considered an outsider among the university’s largely liberal wing. Academic staff – provide details about the incident.
“I think people probably didn’t want to have anything to do with him on this. It seemed like a pretty crazy thing, so people didn’t want to go along with it at the time,” Hammond said.
News of Roberts’ alleged comments about a colleague comes amid a racist and false propaganda campaign by Republican presidential candidate Trump and running mate J.D. Vance to demonize Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio. This was communicated to me while I was working there. Killing and eating someone’s pet. The xenophobic claims, presumably intended to shore up support among white, racist, anti-immigrant voters, prompted multiple bomb threats that disrupted the Springfield community.
“Project 2025,” written by the Heritage Foundation on Roberts’ watch, is a project whose radical policy prescriptions, including eliminating the Department of Education and introducing further restrictions on abortion, will help Trump’s administration if elected. It becomes a blueprint. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance have sought to distance themselves from the 900-page report, with Mr. Trump insisting he has not read it. But vice presidential candidate Vance, in the foreword to Roberts’ book, praised Roberts’ “depth and stature on the American right” and said, “These ideas will be essential weapons in the battles ahead. ” states.
Mr. Roberts is one of Washington’s most prominent right-wingers. He has close ties to the Catholic group Opus Dei and has been outspoken about his belief that outlawing contraception is one of the “toughest” political battles conservatives will face in the future.
Twenty years ago, Mr. Roberts (now an ardent supporter of Mr. Trump) was an academic who might have caused some misgivings among fellow professors who did not align with him politically. But Hammond said his colleagues treated him with respect and kindness and were happy for him to work at the university, including bringing food to his home after his wife gave birth.
One former colleague recalled being reprimanded by Roberts after he told colleagues he was going to use his university email account to help then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign. Inappropriate. However, interpersonal relationships were generally good.
Marcia Weisiger, a colleague of Roberts’ at the time and now a professor of environmental history at the University of Oregon, was invited to dinner at Roberts’ home with her husband and told them how Roberts had beaten his neighbor. I remember when I did that. I killed a pit bull with a shovel.
“My husband and I were both surprised. First of all, that he would do something like that. And second, that he would tell us about it. If I were to do something horrible… Even if I did, I wouldn’t tell my colleagues about it,” she said.
To make matters worse, Roberts recalled that the neighbor in question also had a puppy and said he had once considered killing it. Weisiger’s husband, speaking on condition of anonymity, recalled that Roberts complained to police about the dog, but police did not respond and that the dog sometimes came into their yard.
At the time, Roberts lived with his wife and young family in a modest, mostly immigrant community in Las Cruces, a historic neighborhood of traditional adobe houses and chain-link fences, according to public records. It has been confirmed that there was.
Roberts claimed in a statement that the city later arrived and removed “more than 10 dogs” from the neighbor’s property, citing animal cruelty. He said he is “incredibly grateful” to animal control for rescuing the “abused animal” and is grateful that he and his daughter did not have any physical contact with the dog. spoke.
Roberts also identified the man he referred to as the “animal owner.” Roberts, whose name is Daniel Allan, is from Las Cruces and was sentenced to 78 months in prison in 2017 for cocaine trafficking, a spokesperson for Roberts said in an email. 10 years have passed since the alleged incident occurred.
Public records and a Guardian report confirm that Alan and his mother lived next door to Roberts at the time Roberts lived there.
The Guardian has not been able to independently verify whether Mr. Roberts actually killed the dog or whether his description of his interaction with his neighbor’s dog was accurate. The Guardian has repeatedly sought out public records to verify the alleged accounts. The city of Las Cruces, police and animal control officials said public records regarding the time period during which the incident allegedly occurred are not available.
But the Guardian tracked down Daniel Allan. His mother, Norma Noriega, still lives in an adobe house next door to Roberts’ previous home in Las Cruces.
Noriega’s family moved into the home around 2002 with her husband and children, Dennis Allan, who was about 7 years old at the time, and Daniel, who was about 16 years old.
Daniel Allan, who has been released from prison and now runs a small construction company, spoke to the Guardian from the front garden of his small stone house. Alan is lean and muscular, with a chiseled face and a hard stare.
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“When I was young, I was wild. But I paid respect to be respected. Now I care more about work and family,” he says, dusting off the clothes he wore from construction work. he said as he paid. “And I’ve always been a dog lover, an animal lover, ever since I was a kid. I’ve always had dogs.”
Alan said he was keen on the small pit bulls he bred and sold the puppies as a way to make money for his family.
When asked if he lost his dog around 2004, he replied: “Yes, definitely my dog, Roca, my little bitch,” he replied. She was his favorite, he said.
“I had one woman, and that was her. She was this tiny, tiny thing,” he said, holding up his hands in affection. “She was a small and cute girl.”
“She went missing and we couldn’t find her,” he said.
When asked by the Guardian about Mr Roberts’ remark to a colleague that he had killed a neighbor’s pit bull with a shovel, he winced. “Well, you never know what’s inside a person’s head.”
“I’m not here to make up a story or say he did it,” he said. “But it was around 2004 that Roca went missing,” he said. “I’d like to say, oh, I know this idiot did that, but I can’t say that. But what I can say is that my dog went missing and we They couldn’t find her. She wasn’t in the dog trap.”
Ms Allan also denied Mr Roberts’ claim that the dog was removed from the property.
“We had three dogs, and every now and then we would sell puppies,” he said.
Her mother, Norma Noriega, 53, who was sitting in her front yard, also disputed Roberts’ account.
“That never happened,” she said in Spanish. “(Animal Protection) never took the dogs away. Sure, sometimes they would go out and we would look for them and bring them back. But… There has never been an incident where our dog was removed due to abuse or anything like that, but that is simply not true.
“Only in the case of Roca, we never understood what happened. She disappeared, and we always thought it was strange that we would never see her again. (Daniel) ) I went out looking for her, but I couldn’t find her,” Noriega said.
The family has owned several pit bulls over the years, and Brownie and Casper were their longtime pets. However, it was Roca’s disappearance that always haunted the family.
“She’s the one who went missing. We went out looking for her, we went dog hunting, but we never found her,” Alan said quietly. “And I know the dog catchers couldn’t catch her.”
Asked about his memories of Roberts, Alan replied, “Well, it’s been over 20 years,” and admitted that his dog was noisy.
“I’m sure he needed some patience,” Alan said. “But as far as I can remember, he was never rude,” he said.
Additional reporting by Melissa Segura
