Project 2025 mastermind boasted of killing neighbor's dog with a shovel: report

The architect of the Project 2025 manifesto for remaking the federal government to serve Donald Trump allegedly told colleagues that he killed a neighbor's dog with a shovel because it was a nuisance. Kevin Roberts, who is now president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, told New Mexico State University colleagues and dinner guests that he killed the pit bull around 2004 because it was barking and bothering his family, according to sources who attended a dinner at his home and described the incident to The Guardian. “My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog — end of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, who was then chair of the university’s history department. Marsha Weisiger, a former colleague who is now an environmental history professor at the University of Oregon, recalled Roberts telling her and her husband about killing a neighbor's pit bull with a shovel. Thankfully, the owner arrived in time to restrain the animal before it could get loose and attack us.” Roberts identified the former neighbor who owned the dog as Daniel Aran, who his spokesman pointed out was sentenced to 78 months in prison for cocaine trafficking in 2017, and The Guardian tracked him down for an interview about the incident two decades ago, when he was 16 years old.