The Virginia Tea Partier who reportedly posted Rep. Tom Perriello’s (D-VA) brother’s address online — and then explained it away as “collateral damage’ — said on MSNBC this morning that he never meant anyone to attack or vandalize the home.
After the address was published in a post urging anti-health reform activists to “drop by,” someone cut a propane gas line at the house. The FBI is investigating.
“If someone did believe they were acting on my behalf, they were incorrect,” said Tea Partier Nigel Coleman in a phone interview with MSNBC’s Tamron Hall.
Coleman wrote in a blog comment several days ago — after learning that Perriello’s brother’s address had been posted instead of the congressman’s: “Do you mean I posted his brother’s address on my Facebook? Oh well, collateral damage.”
“That was a mistake for me to say that,” Coleman said today, adding that he took the comment down days before Perriello’s brother’s house was targeted.
Coleman continued:
I do understand that someone may have taken this the wrong way. And we would certainly apologize if someone had done something like that.
Coleman, who is black, was also asked what he thought of reports that anti-health care reform Tea Partiers shouted “nigger” at civil rights hero Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) on Saturday.
“I defintely felt that that was not something that played well for the Tea Party,” Coleman said, adding that perhaps “one or two bad apples” were to blame.
“Of course the Tea Party movement dos not condone those particular types of attacks,” he said.
