Sheriff: Ronny Jackson threatened to ‘beat’ state trooper after being handcuffed at rodeo

WASHINGTON – Amarillo congressman Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, threatened to beat a state trooper and “bury” a West Texas sheriff in the next election after deputies pushed him to the ground and handcuffed him at a rodeo, according to a sheriff’s incident report released Friday night.

Jackson, a former White House physician and retired rear admiral, portrayed himself afterward as the victim of overzealous officers who didn’t realize he was trying to put his medical expertise to use helping a teenager who was having a seizure.

The report on the July 29 incident from Carson County Sheriff Tam Terry portrays the GOP congressman as belligerent and uncooperative. It says deputies asked Jackson to step back at least four times before they detained him, and he had also ignored the state trooper’s order to step back to let emergency responders help the girl.

He then unleashed profanity at the trooper and threatened to beat him up, said the incident report, obtained through an open records request.

Jackson’s office, provided a copy of the report, disputed that he’d been drinking and accused officers of mishandling the situation.

“Congressman Jackson was not drinking and was prevented from giving medical care in a potentially life-threatening situation due to overly aggressive and incompetent actions by the local authorities present at the time of the incident,” Jackson spokeswoman Kate Lair said. “He was asked to help the teenager when no other uniformed medics were present. Congressman Jackson, as a trained ER physician, will not apologize for sparing no effort to help in a medical emergency, especially when the circumstances were chaotic and the local authorities refused to help the situation.”

According to Chief Deputy Sheriff JC Blackburn’s account, Jackson remained agitated even after he was released from handcuffs, and was “screaming profanity about the trooper.”

“I physically had to hold Congressman Jackson back from going towards Trooper Young,” Blackburn said.

He said he eventually pushed Jackson into the congressman’s car, where Jackson “continued to yell and scream from inside the vehicle about who he was. Congressman Jackson also stated that he was going to call Governor Abbott.”

The sheriff himself didn’t witness the confrontation – he was waiting for the ambulance – but at Jackson’s request, he called the congressman shortly after the officers had released him.

Jackson, the sheriff wrote in his report, was still furious.

“Jackson stated that the deputies used bad judgment, that the situation needed to be investigated, and that there better be consequences,” the sheriff wrote. “He stated that he was not threatening me, but that in the next election he would pull hell and high water and come and ‘bury me in the next election!’ “

“He ended the conversation with the statement ‘Game on,’ ” the sheriff wrote.

The incident took place in White Deer, 40 miles northeast of Amarillo.

The two-term Republican’s vast U.S. House district stretches from Denton to the Panhandle. It’s one of the most Republican in the country.

Elected in 2020 with support from Donald Trump, Jackson’s reputation as a hothead and occasional heavy drinker helped torpedo his nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2018.

The day after the rodeo incident, Jackson’s office preemptively sought to tamp down speculation that he might have been impaired, issuing a statement that Jackson “sat in the stands during the entire rodeo, in full view of the assembled crowd, and was not drinking.”

The incident report contradicts that.

“Trooper Young asked me if I thought he was intoxicated. I told them that I knew he had been drinking alcohol due to he was backstage earlier in the evening drinking alcohol while I was working security in that area,” Blackburn said in the report.

One of the EMTs on the scene, Kimberly Thomas, also told the sheriff that “he did appear drunk.”

“I heard a guy say he was a doctor but we were already leaving, and he was chest bumping the Trooper at the time,” she told the sheriff, according to the incident report.

A scathing Pentagon watchdog agency report from March 2021 ― two months after he took office – found that Jackson routinely harangued underlings in the White House Medical Unit, sexually harassed a subordinate and, while on overseas trips, violated a ban on drinking and took sleeping pills that would have impaired his ability to treat the commander in chief in an emergency.

Jackson called those allegations “false,” and rejected the 37-page report as “a political hit job because I have stood firm in my support for President Trump and his America first agenda.”

The rodeo incident began when a girl began to have a seizure that a relative attributed to low blood sugar.

There were at least 3,500 people at the rodeo, according to the sheriff.

Officers arrived before medics and began pushing people away from the teen. That included Jackson, who tried to explain who he is.

“They were screaming that they did not effing care who he was,” Linda Shouse, a relative of the girl, told CNN. “The next thing I knew, they had him on the ground, grabbed him by the shirt, threw him on the ground, face first into the concrete and had him in cuffs.”

The day after the incident, Jackson’s office blamed “confusion” from the “very loud and chaotic environment” and said officers prevented him from helping during a medical emergency.

According to the sheriff’s incident report, two emergency medical technicians from White Deer were in the rodeo crowd. They began helping the girl before the ambulance arrived, taking over from a relative who said she was a nurse.

“The Trooper and Deputies did not know who the nurse was and certainly did not know who Ronny Jackson was or that he was a physician,” the sheriff wrote, adding that the trooper and his deputies were all in uniform. “One thing for sure is everyone present knew that the Trooper was a Trooper, and everyone should have complied with his commands no matter the circumstances.”

DPS has not yet released footage from the trooper’s body camera.

The sheriff said he reviewed it, as did a Texas Ranger, and they agree the officers’ actions were justified.

Jackson joined the White House Medical Unit in 2006, 11 years after receiving his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.

He was promoted to director in 2010 and ran the unit until the end of 2014.

In 2018, Trump tapped Jackson to join the cabinet as VA secretary. Senators in both parties balked.

Within two months, the nomination crumbled amid concerns about his management experience and style and a flurry of allegations that he had over-prescribed painkillers and berated subordinates.

After retiring from the Navy in late 2019, Jackson turned his sights to a congressional seat that came open when longtime Rep. Mac Thornberry retired.

Jackson ran second in a 15-way primary, then won a runoff with Trump’s help and coasted to victory in November with 79% of the vote.

He ran unopposed in last year’s GOP primary and won his second term with 75% of the vote.