Appearing in a Manhattan courtroom Wednesday morning, actor Alec Baldwin pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment and will take anger management classes stemming from a November parking lot scuffle.
Baldwin has denied punching anyone in the clash. The former 30 Rock star’s lawyer previously said he would be vindicated. “Mr. Baldwin did not commit any crime, and we are confident that once this matter is fully investigated, it will be resolved swiftly and appropriately in court,” Abramson previously said. He didn’t show the video and declined to give details about it.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, said in court papers the 60-year-old star told a police officer the other driver “stole my spot,” used a vulgarity to describe him, and acknowledged: “I did push him.”
Alec Baldwin, who portrays President Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, has gotten into several public confrontations over the years. Some have led to legal trouble. He was arrested in 1995 after being accused of slugging a photographer in Los Angeles, and he was thrown off an American Airlines flight in 2011 after a dust-up with a flight attendant who asked him to stop playing Words with Friends and turn off his cellphone.
In 2014, Baldwin was arrested in New York for allegedly getting belligerent with police who said they stopped him for bicycling the wrong way on a one-way street.
“Looks like you have a short fuse,” a Manhattan judge said when he put that case on track to be tossed out, which it ultimately was.
Months before the 2014 arrest, Baldwin authored a New York Magazine cover story decrying tabloid coverage of his comings and goings in the city and suggesting he was giving up on living there.
“I know there’s an impression that I’m someone who seeks to have violent confrontations with people. I don’t,” he said.
Baldwin took to social media on Wednesday and lashed out at the media.
“The vermin at Fox News continues to tell a story about ‘an alleged punch.’ There are three cameras in front of my bldg.,” he said, adding, “It didn’t happen.”
4- The vermin at Fox News continues to tell a story about “an alleged punch.”
There are three cameras in front of my bldg.
It didn’t happen.
— HABFoundation (@ABFalecbaldwin) January 23, 2019
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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