West Virginia journalist arrested after asking HHS Secretary Tom Price a question

As Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price walked through a hallway May 9 in the West Virginia state capitol, veteran reporter Dan Heyman followed alongside him, holding up his phone to Sec Price while attempting to ask him a question. Heyman, a journalist with Public News Service, repeatedly asked the secretary whether domestic violence would be considered a preexisting condition under the Republican bill to overhaul the nation’s health care system, he said. “He didn’t say anything,” Heyman said later in a news conference. “So I persisted.” Then, an officer in the capitol pulled him aside, handcuffed him and arrested him.

Heyman was jailed on the charge of willful disruption of state government processes and was released later on $5,000 bail. Authorities said while Secret Service agents were providing security in the capitol for Sec Price and Kellyanne Conway, special counsel to the president, Heyman was “aggressively breaching” the agents to the point where they were “forced to remove him a couple of times from the area,” according to a criminal complaint. Heyman “was causing a disturbance by yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price,” the complaint stated.