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Scottsdale-based MAGA influencer Melissa Rein Lively paid a woman £910 — around $1,222 in U.S. dollars — in compensation for a hair-pulling assault outside of a London Underground station in early October 2025, according to the BBC.
Lively accepted a “conditional caution” and her charge of assault by beating was dropped in Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday over an alleged assault that she and her fiancé, venture capitalist Philipp Ostermann, engaged in in early October. She was not present at court. As an alternative to prosecution in England and Wales courts, a conditional caution is an “out-of-court resolution” that is offered to a person who “admitted to the offense” and “agrees to accept” the caution, according to the Crown Prosecution Service.
In an interview with Phoenix New Times, Lively denied any wrongdoing or the acceptance of any guilt, comparing her fine to a “warning” and adding that the prosecution’s story is a “complete fallacy” and a “complete lie.”
“This was an on-the-street altercation that lasted less than two minutes, and I was not even made aware of this until a month later,” she said. “That’s how minor it was.”
The 40-year-old public relations executive initially made international headlines during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 for destroying a face mask display at a Target store in Scottsdale. Since the incident, Lively has transformed into something of a MAGA darling.
Prior to President Donald Trump’s second term, she heavily campaigned for the White House press secretary job, which she ultimately lost to Karoline Leavitt. According to a profile of Lively in the May edition of Phoenix Magazine, she runs three PR companies — including America First and Europe First PR — although she declined to name any clients.
Lively made international headlines again last November for the London Underground incident. On Nov. 10, British Transport Police published a release seeking information related to Lively and Ostermann, an associate director at the Munich-based private equity firm Aequita, for a potentially racially charged assault at a London train station a month earlier. Lively said that when she saw her photo on the police website, she was “so shocked” and “thought it was a joke.”
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Six months later, Lively paid the price. According to the BBC, the court heard that the victim was walking with her sister toward Bond Street station with two children, one of whom was in a stroller. Lively and Ostermann were ahead of them, kissing and seeming to be intoxicated. According to the prosecution, Lively appeared to stumble into the stroller, and the woman pushed it back.
The prosecution alleged that Ostermann said, “You bloody Indians, watch where you’re going; you shouldn’t be here.” The prosecution also alleged that Lively had fallen over the stroller while the women told Ostermann that they weren’t Indian and to stop being racist, according to the BBC. Then, Lively grabbed one of the sisters by the hair and tugged it “in a forceful manner,” according to the prosecution.
Speaking to New Times, Lively noted that there isn’t any video or audio of the run-in and claimed that the prosecution’s account omits some key details. She claims that she was “attacked from behind by two women who were running down the street with a stroller,” and that there were six men behind them who the couple thought “were part of a distraction crime ring” to steal her purse, which she said is a “very common threat in Europe and in the UK.”
Lively denied being intoxicated and said the “racism accusation” was “completely false.”
“In a split second, this is what I thought happened,” Lively said, citing her concern about a distraction robbery. “My handbag was grabbed and pulled to the ground, and instinctively I responded by grabbing this woman’s hair, which caused her to drop the bag, and then she retaliated by grabbing my hair.”
In his court proceedings, Ostermann denied two racially aggravated public order offenses and a further public order offense against him, according to the BBC. He was released on conditional bail and is set to appear at City of London Magistrates’ Court in mid-November for trial. Lively said that her fiancé was just protecting her from “what we thought was a distraction robbery.”
“There was a lot of dishonesty in this incident, which was a very minor street altercation that lasted less than two minutes,” she said. “The international media spectacle that this has turned into is beyond absurd.”
At the end of the phone call with New Times, Lively said she recorded the interview and will “hold you personally accountable in addition to your publisher” for any “discrepancies in the facts that I told you on this call.”
