A man wearing a pink mask entered the headquarters of the Massachusetts Republican Party in Woburn on Wednesday, called staff members “fascists,” and threatened to “come back with a weapon,” two eyewitnesses said.
“When asked to leave,” party spokesman Evan Lips said in a written statement, “the man then demanded to know why staffers weren’t wearing masks inside their offices, calling it ‘a violation of the state mandate’.”
A part-time party staff member, John Milligan, called Woburn police, who came to the scene, Lips said. But before police arrived, a woman who works elsewhere in the building saw the man drive away in a black Prius, Lips told NewBostonPost.
A Woburn police spokesman could not be reached by NewBostonPost on Thursday.
Lips, who said he was in the office when the incident occurred at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, February 9, answered questions from NewBostonPost about the incident early Thursday.
The man identified himself to Lips as Hugh Samson, Lips said.
Wendy Wakeman, a party volunteer, appeared on The Howie Carr Show on Wednesday. She told Carr it was a quiet afternoon at the party’s fifth-floor office in a nondescript office park.
“And then from out of nowhere, all of a sudden standing in the middle of the conference room, there’s this guy wearing a big overcoat, a strange — like a velour hat, a pink mask, and I look up and say, ‘What are you doing? Who are you?’ “ Wakeman said.
“He said, ‘My name is Hugh Samson, and I’m going to take your picture.”
She said she and Milligan asked him to leave. Samson said he wanted to talk to her “about the January 6th insurrection,” referring to the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Wakeman said.
“Milligan says, ‘Sir, you have to leave.’ And we’re walking, Milligan and I are like a human wall, kind of pushing this guy out. And he’s just screaming. He starts dropping the F-bomb and saying ‘You’re a fascist! You’re fascist!’
“And then we get him out the door and then I close the door and I lock it. But he stands outside the glass door and screaming, ‘You’re a fascist! You’re a fascist! What if I came back with a weapon?”
Milligan called the Woburn police department. The man left the building and drove away before police arrived, Wakeman said.
Lips told NewBostonPost that he and other party staff members were able to identify Samson using a photo published by the The Lynn Daily Item in November 2020. A man identified in the caption of the photo as Hugh Samson of Nahant is wearing a white mask and glasses while standing near a Biden/Harris campaign banner and holding a sign that says “I Have A Dream.”
Attempts by NewBostonPost to reach Samson on Thursday were unsuccessful.
Campaign finance records show that Hugh Samson of Nahant has donated large amounts of money to Democratic candidates and political action committees.
He also donated a total of $1,550 to five other Democratic candidates for state office, plus $100 to the Nahant Democratic Town Committee, according to state records.
That includes 183 donations totaling $94,745.94 during the years 1990-2018; 70 donations totaling $8,449 in 2019; 757 donations totaling $112,780.50 in 2020; and 212 donations totaling $34,470 in 2021.
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