The woman President Donald Trump ridiculed from the stage at a recent rally has brought in legal muscle while the men who attacked her remain uncharged.
Blake Miley is now being represented free of charge by prominent civil rights attorney Subodh Chandra, The New York Times reported Saturday. Miley was wrestled to the ground and struck in the face by rally-goers earlier this month after she disrupted Trump's speech in Youngstown, Ohio.
Miley had risen midway through the event, shouting "Fascist" and showing off a homemade shirt demanding the release of the Epstein files. As the crowd turned on her, Trump taunted her from the podium, calling her "scum" and "a fat guy" while repeatedly referring to her as a man.
"And he's going to get home and he's going to get smacked," Trump told the crowd.
Chandra told the Times he has been in contact with Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene and believes investigators are "trying to do their jobs." Should no arrests materialize, he noted, Ohio law allows private citizens to bring charges before a judge for review.
Greene said he has identified three men who took part in the assault, including a New Jersey man who boasted in a since-deleted Facebook post that he and two friends had thrown a woman "to the concrete." All three are set to be interviewed. The sheriff said he is still waiting on Miley's emergency room records to determine whether the case rises to felony charges or stays at misdemeanors.
His office has fielded as many as 800 phone messages from outraged callers, many of them abusive, Greene said. He added that body camera footage shows his deputies were pushing through the crowd toward Miley and never saw the punch land.
Miley told the Times she understood the danger going in.
"I knew there was a really good possibility that this would happen," she said. "But I don't blame myself. It is not right what they did to me."