Reporter Arrested in West Virginia After Persistently Asking Questions of Tom Price -<br />By CHRISTOPHER MELEMAY 10, 2017<br />As Tom Price, the secretary of the Department of Health<br />and Human Services, headed to a meeting at the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston on Tuesday, a reporter from the Public News Service trailed after him in a hallway.<br />The arrest stirred suspicions that officers were trying to thwart his effort to ask questions, though a criminal complaint said he “tried aggressively to breach the security of the Secret Service”<br />and was “causing a disturbance by yelling questions.”<br />His lawyer, J. Timothy DiPiero, said at a news conference on Tuesday night<br />that this was a “highly unusual case,” adding, “I’ve never had a client get arrested for talking too loud or anything similar to that.”<br />And in a statement, the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia called<br />Mr. Heyman’s arrest “a blatant attempt to chill an independent, free press.”<br />“The charges against him are outrageous, and they must be dropped immediately,” it said.<br />After persisting in his questions for nearly a minute, Mr. Heyman was pulled to the side by officers of the West Virginia Division of Protective Services, also known as the Capitol Police, handcuffed<br />and charged with a misdemeanor count of willful disruption of governmental processes.<br />Lawrence Messina, a spokesman for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs<br />and Public Safety, which oversees the Capitol Police, said there was no effort to silence Mr. Heyman.
