AUSTIN, TEXAS — Austin police on Tuesday confirmed they are investigating a reported assault of a woman who claims to have been attacked for wearing a "Make America Great Again" ball cap on 6th Street.

The alleged victim, Haley Maddox, posted a video on Saturday while claiming she had been attacked on March 2 for her headgear expression. The video quickly went viral after right-wing political strategist Michael Coudrey shared it across social media. "The Austin Police Department is aware of the assault with injury incident that occurred on March 2, 2019, at approximately 11:30 p.m. in the 300 block of E. 6th St. where a woman was allegedly assaulted for wearing a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat," police said in a statement. "APD can confirm a report has been filed and the case has been assigned to a detective for investigative follow up. In addition, the Downtown Area Chain of Command is reviewing video of the officer/s interaction with the victims/witnesses."



On the video, Maddox says she wasn't wearing the cap to be provocative, but as an expression of her Texas pride: "We did not go in with the intentions of starting a fight. We were just wearing our MAGA hats out on a Saturday and we wanted to show our support for Texas Independence week," she says in the video. The woman goes on to claim she was attacked by a bartender and another man upon exiting a 6th Street establishment. She suggested police were dismissive of her claims given her obvious support of Donald Trump: "The cops that we reported this to showed bias, in our opinion, towards us because we were Trump supporters and insinuated that this happened because we wore those hats and that's to be expected nowadays, I guess," Maddox says in the video.

Despite the preliminary nature of the investigation, Coudrey concluded that "extremist Democrats" were behind the attack. He labeled the incident as a hate crime after sharing the woman's video on Twitter, asking Trump to intervene in directing the justice department to investigate the matter. "WOW: Two women in Austin, Texas, were viciously attacked and assaulted this weekend by extremist Democrats for simply wearing MAGA hats," Coudrey wrote. "@realDonaldTrump should instruct the DOJ to see this kind of political assault as a federal hate crime and prosecute..."