Mary Lou Retton addresses May DUI arrest for first time
An image collage containing 2 images, Image 1 shows Mary Lou Retton and her daughter in an interview, Image 2 shows Mary Lou Retton at the 1984 Olympics
Olympic gymnastics great Mary Lou Retton spoke out for the first time over her arrest for driving under the influence back in May.
Retton, 57, took 'full responsibility' for what occurred in a statement released to People following her court appearance on Tuesday, where she entered a plea of no contest to a charge of non-aggravated DUI.
Advertisement
She received a $100 fine related to the incident, which is standard for first-time, non-aggravated offenses in West Virginia, People reported.
Mary Lou Retton discusses her pneumonia hospitalization with Today in 2023. TODAY/NBC
'What happened was completely unacceptable. I make no excuses. To my family, friends and my fans: I have let you down, and for that I am deeply sorry,' Retton said in a statement released to the outlet through her lawyer.
'I am determined to learn and grow from this experience, and I am committed to making positive changes in my life. I truly appreciate your concern, encouragement and continued support.'
Retton was arrested on May 17 after police had pulled her over after she was driving 'all over the roadway,' court documents stated.
Advertisement
A bottle of wine had been found in the passenger seat and Retton smelled of booze and slurred her words during the traffic stop, according to the documents stemming from the incident that occurred in Marion County.
Mary Lou Retton reacts to applause after her performance at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles on Aug. 3, 1984. AP
Retton refused a blood alcohol test and failed three field sobriety tests.
Retton became a household name in 1984 for her gold medal performance in the Los Angeles Olympics for winning the individual all-around competition at the age of 16.
The American superstar made headlines in 2023 when she was hospitalized and in the ICU with a rare form of pneumonia, before recovering, but still relying on the help of oxygen.
Olympic gymnastics legend Mary Lou Retton was arrested on DUI charges in West Virginia. Go Fund Me
In an exclusive interview with The Post, Retton's ex-brother-in-law said that the physically demanding sport of gymnastics had taken its toll on her body.
Advertisement
He revealed during the interview that Retton had been 'healing' since the arrest and was lying low in West Virginia.
Through her attorney, Retton asked 'for privacy as she moves forward with her personal and professional life.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
Freed January 6 Prisoner Launches Bid for Congress
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. For Jake Lang, a 29-year-old Donald Trump supporter who spent four years in prison for his alleged involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot, though he was never convicted of any offenses, January 20, 2025, was "like a Biblical miracle." Sitting in his prison cell, Lang heard Trump had pardoned around 1,500 people convicted over their involvement in the 2021 storming of Congress, with charges dropped against those, like him, still battling through the courts. Speaking to Newsweek, Lang said it was "like the Red Sea was parted," adding: "A guarantee that God had given me years ago that he would save me, that he would not forsake me, came true in that moment." When the pardon was issued, Lang was facing a number of serious charges, including "assaulting, resisting, or impeding" law enforcement and civil disorder, with prosecutors alleging he struck police officers with an aluminum baseball bat and kicked one who fell on the ground. Lang has consistently denied any wrongdoing and insists he acted in self-defense after violence was initiated by the police. Lang is currently running for Congress, hoping to take the Florida Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio when he was appointed as Secretary of State by Trump and currently occupied by Republican Senator Ashlee Moody on an interim basis. A special election for the seat is scheduled for November 2026 and Lang is hoping to beat Moody in a primary contest to become the official Republican candidate. January 6, 2021 Lang, an e-commerce entrepreneur originally from New York State, was one of tens of thousands of Trump supporters who gathered in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, to protest what the then-president claimed was the "rigged" 2020 presidential election. The day held great significance as Congress was expected to certify the election result, rebuking Trump's allegations of systematic fraud, though some Republicans refused to do so. Like Trump, Lang remains convinced the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden, though the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency insisted it had been "the most secure" election in American history. A plethora of legal challenges issued by Trump's team failed to get the election result overturned either nationally or in any single state. The January 6, 2021, demonstration turned violent, with hundreds of Trump supporters storming Congress in a bid to block the election result's certification, sparking chaos in which one demonstrator was shot dead by police whilst dozens of officers were injured. Jake Lang is running for Marco Rubio's old Florida Senate seat following his release from prison. Jake Lang is running for Marco Rubio's old Florida Senate seat following his release from prison. Blessed News According to prosecutors, Lang, wearing a gas mask and wielding a baseball bat, struck officers whilst shouting taunts such as "This is our house, we paid for this f****** building." When interviewed by Newsweek, Lang didn't deny handling a baseball bat and wearing a mask but insisted he didn't take them to the demonstration, adding: "I presume whoever brought that was probably worried about an Antifa gang jumping them." He also said he only acted in self-defense. The Congressional hopeful blamed law enforcement for the violence, commenting: "During the course of the police brutality, it escalated to such a crazy nature, people were literally dying, and in order to stop the loss of human life, me and a group of men literally had to put ourselves between the unarmed protesters and this thuggish police group that killed people." This version of events is contradicted by a 40-minute documentary released by the New York Times and largely based on raw footage, which showed demonstrators approaching a police perimeter outside Congress and attempting to overpower them at what it said was the start of the violence. Lang told Newsweek that at times, police were "shooting things over the crowd," which were "landing in the middle of thousands of people," causing them to surge forward towards the police, though video shared on social media appears to show the police being engaged before any tear gas or pepper spray was deployed. According to Lang, during the ruckus, he attempted to rescue Rosanne Boyland, a Trump supporter who died outside Congress, from "the bottom of the dogpile as she was crushed to death" with his arms. Federal Prison Following the January 6 riot, Lang was arrested and spent four years in federal prison as his legal team successfully battled to push his trial back, in part because of a Supreme Court case he was involved in against the prosecutor's use of Obstructing an Official Proceeding charges which carried a maximum sentence of 20 years. Lang said he was moved between different facilities repeatedly after he continued political campaigning in prison, which, together with coronavirus lockdowns, resulted in him spending hundreds of days in solitary confinement. He said: "They don't want the interviews happening so they'll throw you in solitary and then what we do the second I get in the solitary is we have a call to action go out on like Gateway of people call and inundate the jail and they realize I'm too much of a headache, let's just ship him down the road, tell the U.S. Marshals to come pick me up and they're bring me to Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York, God knows where else, all the way out to Oklahoma one time." According to Lang, Trump was popular in federal prison, in part because he signed the 2018 First Step Act, which introduced additional programs and training for prison officers in a bid to reduce recidivism, but also "because Trump has a swagger that they really like." By contrast, he said: "I only met one Joe Biden supporter the entire time I was in prison." Trump supporters clashing with police and security forces as people try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Trump supporters clashing with police and security forces as people try to storm the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington, DC. Brent Stirton/GETTY During Lang's stint in prison, he remained active with both religion and politics, spending time as an unofficial pastor "doing Bible studies" and "baptizing people." He said there was "a big black market in prison" with "the prison smuggling in whatever, and so if I could get my hand on a phone, that's a great weapon on information warfare to use." Lang claimed that in one prison, somebody even told him, "They could get me a cat." Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice for comment on Thursday via online inquiry form. January 6 Love Story During his time in prison, Lang first came across his now fiancé Rachel, another January 6 defendant who was convicted before being released on probation. He said: "It's a J6 love story, the greatest love story every written in the January 6 world. So Rachel was a Jan 6er and I was on a Twitter space I was doing from my prison cell and she was listening. This is one of the times, very rare, where I had a cell Brooklyn Federal Prison, Brooklyn, New York. "We met basically through one of my media interviews...I reached out and we started talking, she started becoming one of the people I trusted and like a right hand of mine while I'm in an amazing woman and I couldn't help but love her and ask her to marry." Run for Congress Following Trump's pardon, Lang quickly re-engaged with politics, announcing his Florida Senate bid in March 2025 after Rubio joined Trump's cabinet. Lang painted Senator Moody, Rubio's replacement, as an establishment figure, commenting: "Ashley's an interesting character because she feigns a lot of Trump's policy positions, but at the end of the day, she is a DeSantis loyalist, and on top of that, she has this extremely established background. She's like the polar opposite of an outsider candidate, just like Donald Trump vs Ron DeSantis." Whilst not a Florida native, Lang said he has deep ties to the state, as "both my grandparents growing up lived in Florida, my mom lives in Florida, and I've lived in Florida myself for different spans." Lang added: "Beyond my roots here Florida is ready, Florida is the most MAGA state in the country, the area around Mar-a-Lago in the West Palm beach where I live is like the conservative Hollywood." If elected, Lang is pledging to help advance Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) agenda. He said: "For me, my calling for running for United States Senate was more I'm going to continue to bear the touch with Donald Trump to mark America's golden age... "The old RINO Republican Party, that Trump obliterated when he came old guard, the uniparty, RINOs, establishment hacks whatever you want to call them, they're no longer in control, and with candidates like myself and other Jan Sixers running were seeing this crazy shift where it's not just Trump, it's more MAGA, its more patriots, that are going to be leading the next generation." While Trump hasn't commented on Lang's campaign, the former January 6 arrestee said he was in touch with the president's team, commenting: "We have a lot of great connections into Team that have been his former attorneys, advisors, now people who are working inside his department of more just giving them information then they do with it what they want." Compensation Asked if he thinks those imprisoned over the January 6 riot should receive compensation, Lang replied: "Of course, 100 percent. I mean, first of all, you have people that lost their entire livelihoods, and there are real monetary damages that happened. People's careers, homes, cars, marriages – all of them dissolved... "I believe that the Jan 6ers are going to come out of this not even just financially stronger but also in a position to start to make real change. People are going to see us as the vindicated patriots that stood up for the stolen election."
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Yahoo
Swalwell calls for Noem to resign following Padilla incident
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) called for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to resign after Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was forcibly removed and later handcuffed at her Thursday press conference in Los Angeles. 'Kristi Noem should resign for what has happened under her watch. No one asked for this. We were promised violent criminals would be deported. Instead, they deported a four-year-old American citizen battling cancer, they arrested a US Marshal over the weekend, a US citizen and now a US senator, the second member of Congress in 45 days, who's been arrested,' Swalwell said in a brief interview with NewsNation on Thursday. 'No one asked for this. It's chaos, and her agents are running around, masked like 1800-bank robber you know, suspects or the KGB officers in Russia. This is not what America looks like. So she should come to Congress. They should take the masks off, and they should stop terrorizing families,' the House Democrat told NewsNation's Joe Khalil. The Trump administration fired back at Swalwell, with the White House communications director Steven Cheung writing Thursday on X that the lawmaker is 'spewing lies because he's an absolute joke of a person who is unserious about his job. These are the rantings of either a madman or a puppet.' Padilla tried to question Noem at a Thursday press conference. The senator identified himself and walked up to the front of the room to try and question the DHS secretary. Agents then grabbed and pushed him away. He was pushed through the door, forced to the ground and handcuffed. The incident has infuriated Democrats in both chambers of Congress, with others, including Padilla's seatmate Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), also calling for Noem to resign. 'He had every right as a member of the United States Senate to talk and be at an event that was open to the public and the press. Instead, he was manhandled by law enforcement, forced to the ground and handcuffed. This is an outrage,' Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said on Thursday. The White House accused Padilla of seeking attention. 'Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theater-kid stunt — but it's telling that Democrats are more riled up about Padilla than they are about the violent riots and assaults on law enforcement in LA,' White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. Padilla, later on Thursday, said that 'if this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, I can only imagine what they're doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country.' DHS said in a statement that the California senator 'was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers' repeated commands.' '@SecretService thought he was an attacker and officers acted appropriately,' DHS said, adding that Padilla and Noem had a 15-minute meeting after the incident. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
LA Riots Hand Republicans Script for Midterms
The masked man on the motorcycle, the one who waved a Mexican flag in front of a torched car as Los Angeles police stood by, will soon be famous. His identity remains unknown, his image iconic - but for all the wrong reasons. Republicans will replay the clip again and again in campaign ads ahead of the midterms. "This lawlessness is exactly what Americans rejected in 2024," said Michael Whatley, chairman of the Republican National Committee. "While Democrats sow chaos, Republicans stand as the party of law and order." President Trump is delivering on his campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration, Whatley told RealClearPolitics, and ahead of the midterms, his party "will continue to run on this winning message and finish the job for the American people." As National Guard were being deployed to quell violence in California, Republicans were mobilizing to capture and catalog video of looting, rioting, and violence. One RNC official told RCP they were struggling to capture the flood of content coming across cable news. "It was just non-stop," they said. "There was so much." That content from the LA riots will soon provide fodder for the contrast Republicans hope to paint in November of next year, illustrating the failed immigration policies they allege California Gov. Gavin Newsom now embodies. For his part, Newsom blames Trump for inflaming an already "combustible situation." Los Angeles became ground zero for the Trump administrations immigration crackdown Saturday when ICE agents launched a series of raids across the city. Protests followed. Some of the demonstrations have been peaceful. The ones getting wall-to-wall news coverage, however, were not. Demonstrators hurled rocks, firework shells, and Molotov cocktails at police. Vandalism and looting ensued, prompting Trump to order 2,000 National Guardsmen to the city without the approval of the California governor. Newsom quickly condemned the move as a "blatant abuse of power" that puts the nation on a path to authoritarianism. "Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles," Newsom said in a speech delivered from an LA studio Tuesday, as the city remains under a curfew ordered by Mayor Karen Bass. "Well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals, his agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses." "California may be first, but it clearly wont end here," the governor said. "Other states are next. Democracy is next." The White House already saw the riots as an opportunity to paint Democrats as hapless in the face of lawlessness. After the governors speech, they were overjoyed to have that fight with Newsom. "Democrats are not even choosing the 20 on 80-20 issues," a White House official told RCP. "Theyre choosing the 10 on 90-10 issues." The situation in Los Angeles could be perilous for Democrats. Newsom has tried to differentiate a violent mob from lawful demonstrators, warning on social media that those "who take advantage of Trumps chaos" will be held accountable, while encouraging those who are "protesting peacefully." The White House, meanwhile, sees nothing but anarchy and is considering invoking the Insurrection Act, a law that grants the president authority to deploy the military on U.S. soil. Asked if he was considering it, Trump told RCP Tuesday in the Oval Office, "We will see." Republicans are betting that voters have already made up their minds. "AI couldnt generate better imagery," said Jesse Hunt, a GOP strategist and former communications director at the National Republican Senatorial Campaign. Trump won the general election, in large part, in reaction to the lax immigration policies of the Biden administration, Hunt told RCP, and the mob violence in LA will capture voter attention ahead of the midterms. "It paints a real picture of which side voters can choose to be on," he said, "public servants enforcing U.S. law in an American city or a violent mob waving another countrys flag." The National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee has already cut a digital spot that will serve as a template for the midterms. Posted on social media Tuesday, the video splices together clips of rock-hurling rioters in the smoke-filled streets of LA with soundbites from Democrats defending the demonstrations as "mostly peaceful protests." The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Speaker Mike Johnson and the largest spender in House campaigns, has already argued this week that the riots roiling Los Angeles will continue to spread to other cities. When confronted with that chaos, the group predicted, "Americans will vote accordingly." A new survey commissioned by CLF, obtained by RCP, and conducted by Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio, provides the reasoning for their confidence. The polling of key congressional districts found that on illegal immigration and deportations, 57% favor "hiring nearly 40,000 additional ICE and border patrol agents to address illegal immigration as well as drug and human trafficking." The Republican survey also showed 68% of voters favor funding for the military to support law enforcement "in their fight against drug cartels." The Trump administration remains convinced that the public is on their side. "They are incredibly out of touch with what the vast majority of Americans support," a White House official said of Democrats, telling RCP, "We are going on offense and backing them into the corner of supporting dangerous criminal illegal aliens, violent rioters, and lawless chaos." Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent. & Philip Wegmann is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics.
