A Minnesota state lawmaker is facing calls to resign after multiple police reports alleging domestic violence came to light.
After state Rep. John Thompson, a member of the local Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, presented a Wisconsin driver’s license during a July 4 police stop despite being in Minnesota’s Legislature, a review attempting to determine Thompson’s residency uncovered allegations he punched, hit, and choked women in four separate instances from 2003 to 2009, according to police reports reported by Fox 9.
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Gov. Tim Walz, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, Democratic-Farmer-Labor House Speaker Melissa Hortman, and Majority Leader Ryan Winkler have all called for Thompson to resign immediately, but a spokesman for Thompson said he won’t resign.
“John Thompson was elected in November to do the will of the people and as a legislator that’s what he has gotten right to work and done,” Jamar Nelson, Thompson’s former campaign manager, said in a press release. “These latest malicious accusations are an attempted political distraction orchestrated by both parties and an amplified showing of systematic racism and has no bearing and he’s doing the people’s work.”
Thompson’s lawyer, Jordan Kushner, confirmed the lawmaker has no plans to vacate office despite the fallout from the allegations.
The first of the four newly uncovered incidents occurred in October 2003, when Thompson was arrested after allegedly hitting his girlfriend with an open and closed fist in front of her 5-year-old daughter in a supermarket parking lot. His girlfriend declined to cooperate with law enforcement, who said that Thompson fled the scene and resisted arrest when police located him. He pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
Nearly a year later, the same woman alleged that Thompson put his hands around her neck and began choking her at her apartment. She claimed that while he choked her, he said, “I’ll choke you until you can’t breathe anymore.” She then ran out of the apartment screaming, but he grabbed her and dragged her back inside, she told authorities.
Police reported she told officers that after she called 911, he began “hitting her in the head [and] punching her in the face, and then he grabbed her and threw her into the kitchen table, which broke.”
The woman also said her daughter and Thompson’s two sons witnessed most of the alleged attack.
Officers from the Eagan Police Department took the woman and her daughter to a domestic abuse shelter, and the case was referred to child protection and the Dakota County attorney to review for possible charges.
In 2009, police officers were dispatched to a domestic dispute in which two women were fighting with Thompson about a cellphone he received from a different girlfriend. As the yelling escalated, he allegedly pulled out his penis in front of his girlfriend at the time and two young children. It is unclear whether the girlfriend was the same woman involved in the previous two incidents.
He denied exposing himself, and the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office declined to file charges.
Thompson was accused of exposing himself to a different woman in March 2010. His girlfriend, who said she had been with Thompson for 11 years, alleged that Thompson exposed his penis and told her to “kiss the tip” in front of relatives and children. The woman also claimed to the police that he choked her.
The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office did not pursue charges “due to several issues, delayed 911 call, [and] poor witness info, [and the] victim stated she was fired up and doesn’t remember who attacked who first.”
“Mr. Thompson does deny the allegations,” Kushner said. “The end results speak for themselves.”
Thompson is on trial for the misdemeanor charge of obstructing the legal process after he got into an argument with law enforcement officers over their treatment of the family and friends of a patient at North Memorial Health Hospital, according to legal documents reviewed by the Star Tribune.
“He did nothing to obstruct the police officers. He was arguing with them about how they were treating people there,” Kushner said, explaining that there was “a large group of African American visitors who were concerned about a loved one.”
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A member of the Minnesota House can be expelled “with the concurrence of two-thirds” of its members, according to the state’s Constitution.
Thompson was first elected in 2020.
