Jonathan Kaye Moelis banker arrested and charged with assault after video shows him allegedly punching woman in the face as banker’s lawyer insists he was only acting in self defense.
A wealthy investment banker captured on cellphone video violently punching a woman in the face at a Brooklyn pride event last month turned himself into authorities on Monday, police said.
Jonathan Kaye, 52, was arrested and charged with second and third degree assault over the attack that sent the victim crashing down on a Park Slope street back on June 8, the NYPD said.
The investment banker‘s surrender to cops comes after authorities initially denying that they were seeking to arrest Kaye along with the individual seen in the video allegedly assaulted saying she would not seek to press charges.
Investment banker lawyer releases statement denying assault
It is thought Jonathan Kaye’s arrest comes after the alleged victim relenting and filing a police report in which she stated she had been received a broken nose, black eye and lacerations, Bloomberg reported.
Kaye’s surrender follows video of the assault going viral along with photos of the banker being plastered throughout the tony enclave of the Park Slope neighborhood where he lives with his family in a $4 million, four-bedroom townhouse.
Kaye, who was initially put on leave from his job, resigned from the Manhattan-based outlet, Moelis & Co. investment bank last week. At the same time, residents and neighbors (some of whom live in homes he rents out) had demanded that the police arrest the banker along with urging he move out of their neighborhood.
Read a statement from Kaye’s lawyer, Danya Perry of Perry Law: ‘Kaye, a middle-aged Jewish man with no history of violence or aggression, was terrorized, assaulted, and surrounded by a group of unruly anti-Semitic protesters. What the previously released video clip does not show is what another video and other evidence we have shared with the District Attorney does show: that these agitators formed a ring at him, doused him with two unknown liquids, shoved him to the ground, and hurled anti-Semitic slurs at him. Terrified and injured, Kaye managed to act in self-defence to escape the situation and return safely to his family.
‘We are hopeful that the District Attorney will fully and fairly consider these facts, along with the surge of anti-Semitic acts, protests, and attacks that are ravaging our city. We will aggressively fight injustice, and we look forward to a full vindication for our client.’
Self defense?
Sources close to Kaye had insisted that the banker had acted in self-defense when he clashed with members of an anti-Israel LGBTQ group outside a café following the Pride event and as a Jew ‘feeling threatened’ by comments and innuendo allegedly made by up to four female protesters he had passed along a street
‘They were marching, they had a flag, and Jonathan simply said something along the lines of, ‘you guys are on the wrong side,’ the source had previously said.
‘From there about four people from the group came up to him, they circled him and threw red liquid on him,’ the source claimed. ‘He tried to back away, but he was either chest-bumped or fell to the ground, smashing his knee and slicing his leg.’
The alleged victim, however, insisted Kaye instigated the attack and denied claims from the sources that she and her friends had first hurled antisemitic slurs.
‘He was literally a tornado of violence,’ the woman, only identified as Micah P, told NBC4.
‘There was nothing — no slurs were said whatsoever,’ she added. ‘We didn’t even get a chance to get a read of him. He was enraged and terrifying. He was a big, strange man who ran up on us and started swinging almost immediately.’
Micah, who claimed the chaos broke out after Kaye called them a ‘bunch of useful idiots,’ admitted to tossing water on the banker – but only after he allegedly rushed at them.
A 10-second clip of the alleged assault, which doesn’t show the moments leading up to Micah P’s assault, captured a flustered Kaye allegedly walking away from the woman with the banker’s jacket covered in liquid.
‘It’s good that he has been arrested and brought under some form of carceral control,’ Ron Kuby, an attorney who reps the alleged victim, told the nypost on Monday.
‘No slurs were hurled. They didn’t know he was Jewish. They didn’t know he was a supporter of Israel — he just seemed like a random crazy man,’ he added.
Micah P has continued to maintain she will not file charges agains the banker, having previously stated, she did not want to see Kaye arrested but instead, saying, ‘I want him to be a better person after this I want him to get anger management, therapy.’
