O'Rourke Doubles Down On Denials That He Tried To Flee Drunk Driving Scene [#TXPOLITICS 24/7]

Did U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke try to flee the scene of a drunk driving-related crash in 1998? The police report says he did. But he insists he didn't.

The U.S. Senate candidate doubled down Saturday, claiming again (as he did in his debate with rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, that he did not leave the scene the arrest, which happened near El Paso, and added a new claim, that a passenger inside his vehicle that night backs his story.

"I did not flee,” O’Rourke told Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith during the 2018 Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. "The police report on this is wrong.”

He rejected September 1998 police reports that quoted an unnamed motorist as saying he stopped O’Rourke from fleeing the scene of a DUI crash on Interstate 10.

Appearing as the festival’s closing keynote speaker, O’Rourke said he recently contacted the female passenger to get her recollection of that evening. 

“I reached out to the passenger who was in the car that I was driving — who also does not appear in the police report, among other factual errors — somebody that I’ve not spoken to in more than 15 years, and asked her recollection of that evening,” O’Rourke said. “She said, ‘No, we were in the median of the road. We did not try to flee. I don’t know that there was anywhere we could have gone.’”