The Rand Paul Attack Isn't Getting Any Less Weird

When Rand Paul was allegedly tackled by a neighbor Nov. 3 in Kentucky, suffering six broken ribs, it was the worst beating of a sitting senator since 1856, GQ reports. And yet we still haven't gotten a definitive explanation for the attack. "What gives? What really happened? How do we not know this yet?" Chris Cillizza writes at CNN. Amber Phillips at the Washington Post adds: "It's hard to overstate just how weird this story is, and how weirder it keeps getting." A lawyer for Rene Boucher, Paul's neighbor, says the incident had "nothing to do with" politics but rather something "that most people would regard as trivial." On the other hand, Paul and various right-wing news organizations have been hinting at an anti-Republican motivation, which could worsen Boucher's legal predicament.

Meanwhile, GQ visited the gated community where Paul and Boucher live and found residents largely say it was "personal and petty: a clash between a big-deal politician ... and his neighbor, a proud, fiery, and meticulous former doctor." The most recent update from anyone involved comes courtesy of an op-ed penned by Paul's wife for CNN. Kelley Paul, who says her husband is unable to even breathe "without pain," denies there was any sort of "ongoing dispute" between Paul and Boucher, who she accuses of being an "attention-seeking person." She says Paul and Boucher haven't spoken in a decade, and "the only 'dispute' existed solely in the attacker's troubled mind." Kelley Paul says the whole situation has been "made worse by the media's gleeful attempts to blame Rand for it." (More Rand Paul stories.)