Project 2025 mastermind boasted of killing neighbor's dog with a shovel: report

The architect of the Project 2025 manifesto for remaking the federal government to serve Donald Trump allegedly told colleagues that he killed a neighbor's dog with a shovel because it was a nuisance.

Kevin Roberts, who is now president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, told New Mexico State University colleagues and dinner guests that he killed the pit bull around 2004 because it was barking and bothering his family, according to sources who attended a dinner at his home and described the incident to The Guardian.

“My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog — end of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, who was then chair of the university’s history department.

A professor and her spouse also recalled hearing a similar account directly from Roberts, then a NMSU history professor, at a dinner at his home, while three other professors say they heard the story around that time from colleagues who got it directly from Roberts. None of the sources say they asked him to provide additional details about an incident they found to be unsettling.

“I think that probably people were not eager to engage with him over this," Hammond said. "It sounded like a pretty crazy thing to do and people didn’t want to get into it at that point."

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Marsha Weisiger, a former colleague who is now an environmental history professor at the University of Oregon, recalled Roberts telling her and her husband about killing a neighbor's pit bull with a shovel.

“My husband and I were stunned," Weisiger said. "First of all, that he would do such a thing, and second of all, that he would tell us about it. If I did something horrific, I would not be telling my colleagues about it."

Weisiger recalled Roberts saying the neighbor also had puppies that he considered killing as well, although none of the sources told The Guardian that he felt the dogs posed any threat to his family – although that's how he characterized the incident in a statement when asked for comment.

“This is a patently untrue and baseless story backed by zero evidence," Roberts said in a statement. "In 2004, a neighbor’s chained pit bull attempted to jump a fence into my backyard as I was gardening with my young daughter. Thankfully, the owner arrived in time to restrain the animal before it could get loose and attack us.”

Roberts identified the former neighbor who owned the dog as Daniel Aran, who his spokesman pointed out was sentenced to 78 months in prison for cocaine trafficking in 2017, and The Guardian tracked him down for an interview about the incident two decades ago, when he was 16 years old.

“When I was younger, I was wild, but I gave respect to get respect," said Aran, who has been released from prison and is now the owner of a small construction company. "Now I’m more about work and family, and I’ve always been a dog lover, an animal lover, since I was a little kid. I’ve always had dogs.”

Aran specifically recalls one of his dogs disappearing around 2004, while he was breeding pups to help make money for his family's household.

"Yes, definitely, my dog, Loca, my little female," Aran said. “I had one female, and that was her. She was a little, little thing like this. She was a tiny, cute little thing. She went missing, and we never could find her."

He grimaced when asked to comment on claims from Roberts' colleagues about him allegedly killing the dog.

"Man, you never know what’s inside someone’s head," he said. “I’m not here to make up stories or to say he did it, but it was right around 2004 when all that happened, that Loca was missing. I wish I could say, yeah, I know this fool did that, but I can’t tell you that. But what I can tell you is that my dog went missing, and we never found her. She wasn’t at the dog catchers.”