Surveillance footage shows ASU staff member attack a Turning Point USA cameraman. The university appears keen to paint employee as a victim.

A Turning Point USA reporter attempted to put questions concerning sexual education and child-facing drag shows to an LGBT activist who works at Arizona State University on Oct. 11. Once again, the attempted exercise of free speech by conservatives at the taxpayer-funded university did not go unchallenged.

Security footage appears to show writing instructor and Drag Story Hour Arizona co-founder David Boyles violently lash out at a TPUSA cameraman. "Frontlines" reporter Kalen D’Almeida can be seen subsequently intervening to protect his cameraman, landing Boyles on the ground.

ASU president Michael Crow and certain liberal media outfits have since fixated on the reporter's intervention but not the attack that prompted it.

Despite the seemingly defensive nature of the reporter's engagement, the ASU Police Department has confirmed it is investigating whether the incident is a hate crime and looking into possibly pressing aggravated assault charges.

A spokesman for TPUSA told Blaze News that "the video evidence could not be clearer" that Boyles acted first, adding the "seemingly coordinated effort to uniformly denounce the conservative organization" in recent days demonstrates that TPUSA is a "thorn in the side of this established power."

The incident

Although some have demonstrated confusion over what happened, the incident was captured on video from two vantages.

Security footage shared by the ASU Police Department provides a bird's eye view, where D'Almeida and Boyles can be seen walking between two rows of trees with the cameraman keeping pace in front of them.

At the 19-second mark, Boyles, the man dressed in white, can be seen charging the cameraman. He throws out a straight arm, ostensibly reaching for the camera and making contact with the cameraman's person. At the 21-second mark, D'Almedia begins sprinting toward the tangle of flesh, pushing Boyles away from his compatriot.

The momentum the instructor had from his initial charge coupled with the shove carries him to the ground. Boyles quickly regains his footing then appears to speak to both men and a passerby.

Overhead Surveillance Footage | 10.11.23 Reported Assault | Fulton Parking Structureyoutu.be

Footage uploaded to X by TPUSA shows the lead-up to the incident, terminating at the moment of contact between Boyles and the camera.

The video opens with D'Almeida's asking the instructor, "Hey there, David. How you doing?"

Boyles responds, "Oh hey, how you doing?"

Upon spotting the cameraman, the instructor turns sullen, indicating he will not answer the reporter's questions — of which there were many.

"So let me ask you: When did you decide to get obsessed with sex education?" asks D'Almeida.

Again, Boyles indicates he will not answer any questions.

After posing several more questions, which similarly go unanswered, D'Almeida asks, "Why do you feel like children need to be exposed to drag? Why is that something that children should be exposed to?"

Boyles is the co-founder of Drag Story Hour Arizona, which "aims to support diversity and inclusivity in early literacy."

Finally, following D'Almeida's insinuation that the instructor might prefer a country where pederasty was fully permissible, Boyles rushes the camera.

ASU's preferred narrative

Boyles alleged in a Meta post, "I had just finished teaching my LGBTQ+ Youth in Pop Culture and Politics class and was leaving my classroom when I was confronted by two right-wing fascists doing 'citizen journalist' cosplay. One filmed on his phone while the other shouted horrible and incendiary things at me, repeating standard right wing nonsense about Drag Story Hour and also accusing me personally of pedophilia and hating America."

The first-year writing instructor further claimed that "[k]nowing that they were filming in order to post this online and inspire even more harassment against me, I moved to block the camera. When I did so, the other one jumped me from behind, slamming me to the pavement and causing the injuries you see above."

Boyles noted that his physical injuries were minor but that he was "also feeling angry, violated, embarrassed, and despairing at the fact that we have come to normalize this kind of harassment and violence against anyone who tries to support LGBTQ+ youth."

The instructor concluded his post by calling the TPUSA crew "f***ing terrorists" and demanding that politicians similarly critical of the LGBT agenda should be cut off and "shunned from society."

ASU president Michael Crow rushed to join Boyles in displacing blame and denouncing TPUSA after the instructor indicated he wasn't holding his breath for a response from the university because its leaders had "made the university a safe space for bigots of all kinds, partly in pursuit of donations from right-wing billionaires and partly because they are just cowards," reported the Arizona Republic.

Crow stated on Oct. 14, "It is astounding to me that individuals from Turning Point USA would wait for an ASU instructor to come out of his class to follow him, harass him and ultimately shove him to the ground, bloodying his face," further calling it "stunning for Turning Point USA leadership to endorse, defend and fund such activity in the name of 'freedom.'"

In his statement, Crow entirely neglected to mention that Boyles had turned the engagement physical. Rather, he seized upon the opportunity to characterize TPUSA as a threatening presence on campus and call the "Frontlines" crew "[c]owards."

This interpretation prevailed in failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate and Arizona Board of Regents Chair Fred DuVal's statement, obtained by KPNX-TV, in which he claimed, "Turning Point USA should be ashamed for its targeted intimidation campaign against university professors, an effort that culminated this week with an ASU instructor – simply walking to his car after class – being shoved to the ground by a pair of Turning Point operatives. This organization needs to stop putting people at risk."

It appears campus law enforcement might also favor Crow's sense of what happened.

ASU Police spokesman Adam Wolfe told the Arizona Republic the ASUPD investigation would probe whether "bias or prejudice" was a factor.

"Obviously, we know part of their motive," said Wolfe. "We want to try to figure out if that's the whole motive... why did they feel so brazen to come onto campus and confront this professor?"

Wolfe suggested if Boyles was targeted because of his sexuality, aggravated assault charges are on the table as "bias is the aggravating factor."

TPUSA responds

Charlie Kirk, the president and CEO of TPUSA, noted on X that the video evidence was "clear as day," stating, "Professor Boyles attacked our crew first, and our reporter, Kalen D'Almeida, pushed him off to protect his cameraman. Violence is never okay and just because Professor Boyles happens to be gay (or whatever) doesn't give him the right to attack people because he doesn't like the questions they're asking."

TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet told Blaze News, "Self defense is not a hate crime. ... And just because professor Boyle happens to be a gay man or part of the LGBTQ community does not give him license to damage our property, to attack our cameraman, and to turn something into a physical altercation, which otherwise wasn't one. It's very, very simple. I think the video evidence is completely crystal clear."

Kolvet further suggested that Crow's misrepresentation of the video evidence speaks to his broader antipathy for TPUSA.

TPUSA was, after all, partly responsible for Republican lawmakers starting to pay closer attention to the state of free speech at ASU. Ann Atkinson, the executive director of the now defunct T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development, was castigated for hosting TPUSA's Kirk in February. Akinson, who later detailed the ordeal in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, indicated that faculty had also attempted to dissuade students from attending the event.

"[Crow] was silent on the Hamas sympathizers protesting at ASU after Hamas butchered 1,300 Israelis and killed 30 Americans. He was silent on that," continued Kolvet. "Yet, his professor attacks our cameraman and he gets up on the weekend and decides to pen an official letter from the office of the president. It's very telling where his priorities are. It's very telling who he thinks deserves special animus, special attention from his office. And it's shameful."

Kolvet indicated that the cameraman, who along with the reporter allegedly asked Boyles if he needed any assistance after his tumble, has filed a police report with ASUPD. In terms of filing charges, TPUSA is consulting with counsel and "strongly considering it."

As for why TPUSA sought to ask Boyles questions, the spokesman noted, "He's written extensively about minors and their first sexual experiences. He writes about his animus towards Christian conservatives and what he calls hetero-normative oppression. And he's obsessed with underground queer sex ed. ... He's written about it from an academic perspective and he's taxpayer funded. ... He's been completely defended and shielded by this university."

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