Former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin found himself in handcuffs Thursday, arrested on a Christmas movie set in Paris, Kentucky, over an outstanding warrant tied to his ongoing divorce and child support case.
Bevin was booked into a Louisville jail that evening after deputies from the Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office tracked him down while he was working as a featured extra on the film. According to property owner Jessica Mohr, who spoke with Kentucky Public Radio, the former governor was actually mid-conversation with the movie’s lead actor when law enforcement showed up.
“The sheriff showed up and was asking some people if they’d seen his picture, and a young man was like, ‘I think that gentleman’s inside,'” Mohr recounted. “And yeah, he was arrested.”
Bourbon County Sheriff Tony Asbury confirmed in a press release that his office had an active warrant for Bevin and had received a tip that the former governor was on location filming at a local horse farm estate.
“The Bourbon County Sheriff’s Office contacted Former Governor Bevin at the location reported and he was taken into custody shortly after and lodged into the Bourbon-Nicholas County Region Detention Center without any issues as Bevin was very cooperative,” Asbury said in a statement.
The warrant traces back to Jefferson Family Court Judge Angela Johnson, who held Bevin in contempt after he failed to turn over financial documents as part of his ongoing legal dispute with his ex-wife, Glenna Bevin. Johnson sentenced Bevin in June to 60 days behind bars along with a $500 fine. This wasn’t Bevin’s first run-in with the court over the matter either; he had previously been issued a warrant for skipping a May hearing, an absence he attributed to a boulder crashing into his home in Maine.
Bevin served as Kentucky’s governor from 2015 to 2019 before losing his reelection bid to current Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat. His former running mate, Ralph Alvarado, is now running as the Republican candidate for Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District, aiming to fill the seat currently held by Congressman Andy Barr, who is mounting his own Senate campaign.
The arrest quickly became political fodder, with the Kentucky Democratic Party seizing on Bevin’s past ties to Alvarado.
“No one who thought it was a good idea to run alongside Matt Bevin should represent the families of Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District,” the party said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Alvarado’s campaign didn’t defend Bevin’s conduct, instead placing the blame squarely on the former governor for disregarding the court’s authority.
“Court orders are not optional, and everyone should comply with the court’s directive,” spokesperson Andrew Westberry told The Hill. “Failure to do so has consequences.”
As Bevin now faces the fallout from his arrest, the incident adds another unusual chapter to the post-gubernatorial life of a man once at the helm of Kentucky’s government, arrested not in a courtroom or office, but on the set of a holiday film production