A former adviser and friend of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was arrested on domestic violence charges in October.
Nathan Ballard, a public relations consultant with ties to the Democratic Party, is accused of attacking a woman and suffocating a child with a pillow while at a high-end California spa in October, Politico reported, citing court documents.
Ballard, who served as Newsom’s communications director when the governor was mayor of San Francisco, has a temporary restraining order filed against him, according to a representative with the Napa County Sheriff’s Department in California.
“I’ve spent my career in crisis communications fighting on behalf of the wrongfully accused, and now for the first time I really know what it feels like to be in their shoes,” Ballard said in a statement released on Thursday. “I will be exonerated. I love my children more than anything on earth, and we will be reunited.”
Ballard is accused of pushing a woman into a glass door while at the Carneros Resort and Spa. In documents filed with the Napa Sheriff’s Department, records showed Ballard “consumed a large amount of alcohol and some marijuana” and that during the alleged incident, he “attempted to suffocate the child victim with [a] pillow.”
“Ballard grabbed the pillow from the bed, placed it onto the child victim and laid on top of the pillow, placing his weight on the child victim who was under the pillow,’’ the document said.
The child was safely removed from the premises, and Ballard was taken into custody.
Ballard has worked as a spokesman for the Getty family, the Golden State Warriors, Super Bowl 50, and the California Democratic Party, as well as serving in the same position previously for the presidential campaigns of Sen. John Kerry and Gen. Wesley Clark.
Ballard’s lawyer said his client is “in a residential recovery program to deal with his drinking problem.”
