A claim shouted at former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer during his book tour that he publicly spewed the N-word at a black high school student decades ago is being rejected by witnesses who said it never happened.
The charge made by fellow Portsmouth Abbey School student Alex Lombard, who is African American, upset Spicer’s book signing at a Rhode Island Barnes and Noble on Friday night and threatens to dog the rest of his tour to promote “The Briefing.”
Spicer told Secrets, “It never happened. This is personally painful to me.” He is considering suing the Newport Daily News, which filmed the bookstore protest, and the Associated Press for distributing the video.
[More: Sean Spicer never used racial slur, lawyer says]
Two fellow students cited as witnesses by Lombard also rejected the claim, as did an educator from the small Rhode Island prep school Spicer graduated from in 1989. Associates and friends of the former top aide to President Trump in Washington also expressed shock at the claim, citing it as evidence of a growing anti-Trump fanaticism.
“He would never pick a fight and he would never yell a racist remark in front of the entire school and faculty,” said actor and comic John Farley who Lombard had cited as the student who tackled Spicer to stop him from fighting Lombard. “I don’t think that happened, I really don’t. I would recall that,” said Farley, whose brother, the late comic Chris Farley, also attended the school.
“I wasn’t present to anything like that,” said former student Peter Healey, also cited by Lombard, now of Cambridge, Mass. He added, “I knew both Sean Spicer and Alex Lombard during my time at Portsmouth Abbey, and do not recall this incident ever happening or heard of this happening.”
Thanks for coming out, Middletown! @seanspicer and #TheBriefing continue their tour in Rhode Island tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/NxtZDCfLlt
— Regnery Publishing (@Regnery) July 28, 2018
J. Clifford Hobbins, who has taught at the school since 1976 and considers himself a friend of Spicer, was at the Barnes and Noble to get a signed copy of the Briefing, added that the attack by Lombard looked to be staged.
“I know Sean Spicer, I know he’s not a racist and I think the whole thing was a set up. It really smells,” he said.
When contacted, Lombard, who was a year behind Spicer as a member of the class of 1990, emailed, “Thank you for reaching out but at this time I holding off until further notice.” When told of those disputing his account, he emailed, “Lol.”
The Spicer book signing in Middletown, R.I., was going to be chaotic even without Lombard’s unsubstantiated claim. Protesters greeted book buyers with signs that read “liar.” And it had come after Spicer had been challenged at another signing.
At Friday’s signing, a Newport Daily News video camera was running, tipped by Lombard of his comments, according to Spicer associates. As Spicer signed books at a table, Lombard, positioned behind the line, shouted out a seemingly friendly, “Sean, I was a day student at [Portsmouth] Abbey, too, with you.” Spicer waved, and said, “Yeah, how are you?”
Then Lombard said, “Don’t you remember? You don’t remember that you tried to fight me? No, but you called me a ni—- first. Remember? Remember? You called me a ni—- first Sean.”
Security then moved in as people in like could be heard saying, “Get him out of here,” and “he should be arrested.”
Spicer said that he was “appalled” at the charge, and said he was set up. “It was a staged event,” he said.
In a follow up story, the Daily News said that Lombard doubled down on his claim and cited Farley and Healey. Both denied the event that supposedly occurred as students poured out of Chapel at the Benedictine school and into the “quad.”
Farley said had Spicer or any student yelled a racial epithet and then charged a black student, it would be well known. And, he added, Spicer’s “parents would have been called immediately, goodbye. They are very strict and they don’t mess around.”
Asked if he thought Spicer could have made racist remarks, Farley added, “no, not at all. He’s the same guy you see, but just tinier when he was in high school.”
The Daily News cited another student who believed Lombard but who apparently didn’t witness the scene.
Spicer’s lawyer, Michael Bowe, also rejected the charge and noted that Lombard had a drug conviction.
“The person he claims he was walking with at the time, and the person he claims restrained Mr. Spicer, categorically deny any such incident occurred. And every teacher and student then attending this very small school that we have talked to describes the account as utterly implausible. Mr. Lombard is a convicted drug felon, who told one reporter he thought he was talking to Mr. Spicer on the phone [Saturday] night — another delusion,” Bowe wrote.
It wasn’t the first time Lombard made the claim. He did the same on Twitter earlier.
