Police Reports Shed Light on Warnock’s 2002 Arrest for Obstruction: ‘Extremely Uncooperative and Disruptive’

Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock repeatedly disrupted a 2002 police investigation into child abuse at a church-affiliated summer camp, interfering with interviews and discouraging counselors from speaking with investigators, according to two Maryland State Police reports obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The records indicate that Warnock, who was at the time senior pastor of the church that operated the camp, insisted that the camp's attorneys be present. While police said the counselors themselves were free to request an attorney, Warnock could not do so on their behalf.

Warnock went on to disrupt the interviews on July 31, 2002: "This investigator informed [camp administrators] that if the counselors requested that an attorney be present that was their right, however, no one else could [invoke] their rights to an attorney on their behalf," the report reads.

While the names in the documents are blacked out, the reports track closely with contemporaneous newspaper articles about the incident, which led to Warnock's arrest. The charges were ultimately dropped by the state attorney. The Baltimore Sun reported on Aug. 3, 2002, that Warnock and a colleague were "accused in court documents of trying to prevent a state trooper of interviewing counselors at Camp Farthest Out" and that the ministers "interrupted a police interview of a counselor." Warnock told the paper that he was "only asserting that lawyers should be present when the camp counselors were interviewed."

Warnock said in Sunday’s debate that law enforcement officers "actually later thanked me for my cooperation and for helping them," and the deputy state attorney told the Baltimore Sun the same thing in November of 2002.

But the police report paints a more complicated picture of the events. Filed by state troopers after Warnock and another reverend were arrested for "hindering and obstructing" police, the records indicate that investigators repeatedly warned Warnock to stop interfering with the investigation before he was arrested.