Actor Alec Baldwin charged over New York parking spot fight

By Gabriella Borter

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actor Alec Baldwin, most recently famous for his impersonations of U.S. President Donald Trump, was charged on Friday after a fight over a New York parking spot, police said.

The “30 Rock” sitcom actor, 60, “assaulted someone for a parking spot that they were both going for,” New York Police Department detective Sophia Mason said.

Baldwin was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault and harassment, police said. He was met by dozens of photographers and camera crews on his release from a New York police station on Friday.

“Normally, I would not comment on something as egregiously misstated as today’s story,” a post on his foundation’s Twitter account said. “However, the assertion that I punched anyone over a parking spot is false. I wanted to go on the record stating as much.”

Baldwin has enjoyed a new wave of popularity in the last two years for his scathing impressions of Trump on TV sketch series “Saturday Night Live,” winning an Emmy.

Told by White House reporters on Friday of his arrest, Trump replied, “I wish him luck.”

Baldwin has a history of losing his temper. In 2014, he was given a summons for disorderly conduct after an argument with police who stopped him riding his bike down a one-way street in New York. In 2011, he was thrown off a plane for refusing to stop playing the game “Words with Friends” before take-off.

Baldwin, who currently hosts the weekly television talk show “The Alec Baldwin Show,” in 2012 denied punching a photographer who was trying to take photos of him with his then-fiancee, yoga teacher Hilaria Thomas.

Baldwin and Thomas married in 2012 and have four children.

(Reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Jill Serjeant, Susan Thomas and Cynthia Osterman)