A member of the extremist group gave a comb to Mr. Cox, the Republican candidate for governor of Maryland, after his victory in the primary in July, a video showed.
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Dan Cox at his election night watch party in July. Mr. Cox has sought to play down an exchange with a member of the Proud Boys.
After a video emerged on Friday of the Trump-backed candidate for Maryland governor, Dan Cox, accepting a gift from the Proud Boys, the Republican sought to distance himself from the extremist group connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The encounter took place on July 19 in Frederick County, Md., as Mr. Cox, a state legislator, was basking in the afterglow of his resounding victory in the Republican primary for governor, according to the video, published by The Washington Post.
A young man in a black polo shirt with the extremist group’s insignia on it approached Mr. Cox and shook his hand, the video showed. In his other hand, he was bearing a token of appreciation for Mr. Cox, who has made a litany of false claims about the 2020 election.
“Here, this is a present from the Maryland Proud Boys to you,” the man said, drawing a quizzical look from Mr. Cox. “It’s a comb. Proud Boys comb.”
In the video, which The Post reported had been publicly accessible on Mr. Cox’s Vimeo account but vanished later on Friday after the newspaper inquired about it, Mr. Cox asked the man his name and said that it was nice to meet him. The man gave only his first name: Henry.
In a statement on Friday, Mr. Cox — whose far-right credentials were highlighted by Democrats in the primary, hoping they would become a liability in the blue state’s general election — played down the exchange.
“In the noise of the victory celebration, it was hard to hear what was being said,” Mr. Cox said. “I was a surprised by him handing me something, and frankly, I did not even keep the comb. I had never seen him before, and I have not seen him since. I have no affiliation with anyone involved in violence on January 6th, period.”
Mr. Cox’s campaign did not answer follow-up questions about the video’s disappearance.
In a poll conducted in late September by The Post and the University of Maryland, Mr. Cox trailed his Democratic opponent, Wes Moore, by 32 percentage points in the open-seat race for Maryland’s governorship.
As Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, Mr. Cox wrote on Twitter that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor” because of his refusal to overturn the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president. In a letter to the Maryland General Assembly’s legislative ethics committee, Mr. Cox later expressed his regrets about what he described as a “poor choice of word.”
On the day of the Jan. 6 attack, Mr. Cox chartered three buses from his home county to the pro-Trump rally in Washington, but he has said that he did not march to the Capitol.
Last year, Mr. Cox said that Mr. Trump was “the only president that I recognize right now” and argued that Mr. Biden had been “installed” in the White House. He has also made false claims about voter fraud in Frederick County.
Dozens of members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, have been indicted in connection with the assault on the Capitol. Several of the group’s leaders are facing charges of seditious conspiracy. Their role in the siege has received major attention from the congressional committee investigating the attack.
Source: nytimes.com
