Police investigating Gingrich staffer for shoving protester

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Police in Manchester, New Hampshire are investigating allegations that a staffer for Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich assaulted an Occupy Wall Street protester Sunday, according to a report.

Lieutenant Maureen Tessier told BuzzFeed that authorities were looking into the claim that Rebecca Burton (pictured, center) was violently shoved and grabbed by a middle-aged white man wearing an earpiece at a Gingrich town hall event.

“He said, ‘get out, we don’t want you here,’” Burton recalled. “He didn’t say who he was. I was inside the building peacefully holding my sign.”

Quinn Bowman, a reporter for PBS Newshour who witnessed the incident, agreed with her version of events.

“Man w earpiece at Gingrich event in Manchester struggles violently to get sign out of female occupier’s hands,” Bowman tweeted at the time.

“He pushed and shoved her with considerable force, tried to take her sign and he seemed enraged that she was there,” he later told BuzzFeed.

Burton said that both she and the the unidentified staffer were taken outside the event to be interviewed by police.

“They brought him out and I said ‘how could you do that to me?’ And he just looked at me,” she explained.

Photo: Facebook/Rebecca Burton