Rand Paul awarded $580,000 in case stemming from attack by neighbor

In November of 2017, Rand Paul’s neighbor Rene Boucher attacked the Senator, charging at him while he was cutting the lawn with his back turned. The result for Sen. Paul was six broken ribs and severe pain that lasted for weeks. Today, Fox News reports a jury awarded Paul $580,000 in a civil trial stemming from the incident.

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Sen. Rand Paul was awarded over $580,000 in damages by a Kentucky jury on Wednesday after he was attacked by his neighbor in the fall of 2017.

Paul, R-Ky., was awarded $375,000 in punitive damages and $200,000 for pain and suffering, plus $7,834 for medical expenses…

Boucher pleaded guilty in March to a federal charge of assaulting a member of Congress and had asked for probation.

He was sentenced in June to 30 days in federal prison for the assault. He was also ordered to one year of supervised release, a $10,000 fine, 100 hours of community service, and ordered to have no contact with Paul’s family.

The trial took place this week and WBKO reported Tuesday that Boucher issued several apologies during his testimony:

In the later half of the day Tuesday, Rene Boucher was called to testify. From the witness stand he made several apologies directed toward the Paul’s.

“I was not thinking rationally. What I did was wrong, and I’m sorry I did it,” said Boucher.

An apology that Paul’s lawyer indicated was not sincere considering the counter lawsuit Boucher has filed against both Rand and Kelley Paul…

From the stand, a visibly distraught defendant, admitted his fault in the matter.

“I did this. No reason for me to make up a story,” said Boucher. “My left shoulder hit his ribs and broke his ribs. For that, I’m very sorry.”

Boucher described the attack as the biggest mistake of his life.

“It was an irrational thing I did and two minutes of my life I wish I could take back,” said Boucher.

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Boucher has long maintained that the attack had nothing to do with politics though he had a strong motive to say so. A politically motivated attack on a Senator could potentially have put him behind bars for years. Boucher claims he was angry about Paul stacking branches near the property line. His anger was amplified, he claimed, because he’d removed some of the branches and tried to burn them but wound up burning his own arms with gasoline by accident. That was the night before the attack.

For his part, Sen. Paul was cutting his lawn with a riding mower when the attack took place. He had just gotten off the mower to pick up a stick when he was hit from behind and sent flying by the impact which broke six of his ribs. Here’s a bit of Sen. Paul’s testimony from Monday where he describes his injuries as causing “the pain of a thousand knives.”

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