Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) is a rough-and-tumble, old-school politician, by which I mean an utterly entrenched, entitled fixture who survives every reelection despite once having the dubious distinction of an entire section on his Wikipedia page dedicated to physical assaults (It has since been edited away). He’s my Congressman.

The pugilistic piece of fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree, it would seem. Today Moran’s son Patrick pled guilty to assaulting his girlfriend by bashing her head into a trash can outside a Washington, D.C. bar.

The son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran pleaded guilty Wednesday to simple assault after he allegedly slammed his girlfriend’s head into a trash can outside a D.C. bar, according to Washington City Paper.

Patrick Moran pleaded guilty to a charge of simple assault and was placed on probation. He was arrested on Dec. 1 on a charge of felony domestic violence assault. City Paper reports Patrick Moran and his girlfriend were arguing outside The Getaway on 14th Street in Columbia Heights when he assaulted her.

Note to WJLA, whose story is quoted above: You can dispense with the allegedlys after he’s pled guilty. The fight was apparently over Moran talking to another woman in the bar, and lest you think it was a matter of a fog-of-bar pushing match or misunderstanding, here’s the full account from Washington City Paper, which broke the story:

After the attack, police described Moran’s girlfriend as “bleeding heavily from her nose and also observed that her nose and right eye were extremely swollen.” One of the ambulance technicians who transported her to Howard University Hospital told police that Moran appeared to have broken her nose and given her a skull fracture under her right eye.

Moran was arrested for felony domestic violence assault, but pleaded the charge down to simple assault today. He was sentenced to probation.

You’ll remember young Patrick from his appearance in a James O’Keefe sting video, in which he was seen devising keen ways to commit voter fraud. He was immediately off his father’s campaign, but I do remember a passel of liberals assuring us that while Patrick had done something inadvisable, he was clearly a victim of the true miscreant, O’Keefe. One wonders if this time around, he was the victim of the trash can conspiring with his girlfriend in much the same way union thugs were the victims of Stephen Crowder’s face running into their fists.

Rep. Jim Moran’s response to the incident is…inadvisable. Here was his first statement on the issue:

“Patrick and Kelly are both good kids and I hope their privacy will be respected,” Rep. Moran said in a brief statement. “They look forward to putting this embarrassing situation behind them.”

Let’s hope Kelly doesn’t get herself into any more of these “embarrassing situations.”

Take two, after realizing the first statement didn’t even mention the actual assault on a woman of which his son is guilty:

“The Congressman strongly condemns domestic violence. As was stated in court by both his son Patrick and his girlfriend Kelly, the situation was an accident. They were the only two people involved in the scene. In that sense, their statements are the only ones that matter. They are both very embarrassed by the situation, which involved drinking, and they are looking to move past it, and ask for their privacy to be respected.”

Now, I know people will often plead guilty to a lesser charge to get out of a stiffer charge, as Patrick has done here. Some of those people are not guilty and have been unfairly treated by the system. But this is a Congressman’s son, with all the education, resources, and influence in the world, and we’re to believe he pled guilty to assaulting his girlfriend even though he didn’t do it? Isn’t the more appropriate question whether probation is standard practice, here?

Cue the third round of statements, one from Patrick’s girlfriend, whom I want to show respect, as the victim. She did not press charges against Patrick and testified in his defense, and her statement was forwarded to press by Moran’s Congressional office according to City Paper. Here is her explanation:

This was an accident that has been blown out of proportion. The statements in the police report are inaccurate. Pat and I were arguing, one of my high heels gave out, and I fell into the side of a trashcan. On impact, I fractured my nose. False conclusions were made as a result. I hope our privacy will be respected.

A Moran spokesperson follows up her statement with one that contradicts the police report:

“The situation was an accident,” Moran spokeswoman Anne Hughes writes in an email, adding that both Moran and his girlfriend testified to that in court. “Patrick didn’t hit or shove her.”

Hughes claims that only Patrick Moran and his girlfriend were around to see the alleged attack. “They were the only two people who witnessed the scene,” writes Hughes. “In that sense, their statements are the only ones that matter.”

That would contradict the police report, which describes both a Metropolitan Police Department sergeant and an Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration investigator seeing Moran slam his girlfriend’s head into a trash can cage outside the Getaway, a 14th Street NW bar.

“They are both very embarrassed by the situation, which involved drinking,” Hughes continues. “And they are looking to move past it, and ask for their privacy to be respected.”

Because I can’t say it any better, Jason Linkins at Huffington Post:

I also have found that a great way to ensure that your personal privacy gets respected is to not beat your girlfriend up outside a bar. It seems pretty easy to surmise that the moment you start giving your girlfriend “a skull fracture under her right eye” in public is the precise moment the public starts taking a great interest in your personal life.

I hope to see every single report that references Moran’s statement on an “embarrassing situation” also detail that the situation entailed a woman with a broken nose and a possibly fractured skull at the hands of his son. It’d be nice to see reporters ask Moran why he so cavalierly minimized violence against women in his public statements. But he voted for the Lilly Ledbetter Act, so what’s a little blaming the victim among friends, right? Moran, for his part, once jacked an 8-year-old boy up by his throat in the parking lot of my local rec center for allegedly threatening to “carjack” him. That was a big misunderstanding, too, he said. It’s just that the Morans seem to have a lot of misunderstandings with their fists. Let’s hope this knocks out this political dynasty, figuratively, before it has a chance to start.