Maryland State Senator C. Anthony Muse told police his driver had parked his SUV on a sidewalk after a hit-and-run in Annapolis, but surveillance footage obtained by a local news station appears to show the Democrat parking the vehicle himself.
Muse, a 68-year-old Democrat representing Prince George's County's District 26, allegedly struck a parked car's wing mirror with his Land Rover SUV on August 6 while driving along Severn Avenue in Annapolis's Eastport neighborhood. He did not stop. A witness tracked him down, confronted him, and Muse returned to give the other motorist his insurance information. But the sequence that followed, captured on bodycam audio and surveillance video, paints a picture of a state lawmaker who misled police about basic facts of the incident.
The motorist whose car was hit called 911 and did not hold back.
"He didn't stop. Actually, we are pretty sure he is intoxicated. Somebody saw him do it and went and found him and said 'did you know you hit that car?' and then he came back and gave me his information."
After the collision, Muse parked his SUV on a sidewalk against a tree, not in a legal space. A parking attendant at the scene noticed Muse getting back into his vehicle and decided the senator did not look fit to drive. The attendant called police, took Muse's keys, and kept him occupied until officers arrived.
As the Daily Mail reported, the parking attendant told the responding officer plainly:
"I was able to get the keys from him. I'm just keeping him talking."
Bodycam footage captured officers discussing Muse's condition before they even approached the SUV. They noted they did not think Muse was "going to be able to drive." That assessment came from the officers themselves, not from the civilian caller.
When the responding Annapolis police officer reached Muse, the senator offered an explanation: "My driver actually parked here." He then identified himself as a state lawmaker in town for official business. "I'm actually down here for the special session," Muse told the officer. "My driver parked the vehicle and left to go home."
The Maryland General Assembly was indeed holding a special legislative session in Annapolis at the time. That much checked out. The driver claim did not.
ABC affiliate WJLA obtained surveillance footage that appears to show Muse himself parking the Land Rover on the sidewalk and walking out of the vehicle alone. No driver. No second person. Just the senator, his SUV, and a tree.
That footage directly contradicts what Muse told police at the scene. He said his driver parked the car. The video appears to show he did it himself. When an elected official's own words to law enforcement don't match what the camera recorded, the public has a right to ask why.
Muse later gave a statement to Fox45 that shifted the framing. He said he "moved over to give an oncoming truck more room to pass" and that his "mirror inadvertently hit the mirror of a parked vehicle." He added: "There was no place to park on Severn Avenue, so I turned the corner, hurriedly parked on the curb, rushed back to the parked vehicle, apologized to the owner, and gave my insurance info."
That statement acknowledged he parked the vehicle himself, a concession that sits uncomfortably next to his earlier claim to police that "my driver" had done it. Democrats have faced a string of credibility problems in recent months, from Senate Democrats voting to expand tariff authority only to object when it was used, to internal fights over the party's direction.
The responding officer laid out Muse's choices clearly: have his driver come retrieve the SUV, let police tow it, or submit to field sobriety tests and drive it away himself. Muse asked why the vehicle would be towed. The officer explained: "Because it's on the sidewalk."
Rather than pick one of the three options, Muse said he intended to drive to the Westin hotel, his stated destination. The officer offered him a ride instead, and Muse accepted. His SUV was towed, or at minimum was subject to towing.
At one point during the exchange, Muse made a remark suggesting "the 'governor/government' will 'take care of it.'" The Daily Mail noted the exact wording was difficult to hear on the bodycam audio. But the implication, that a state senator expected special treatment for a vehicle parked illegally on a sidewalk after a hit-and-run, is hard to read any other way.
No charges were filed against Muse. The reporting does not explain why. Whether prosecutors reviewed the case, whether the lack of a sobriety test played a role, and whether the surveillance footage was available to police at the time all remain open questions.
It's the kind of outcome that fuels public skepticism about whether the rules apply equally to those who draft them. That skepticism has been growing across party lines, though some Democratic senators have acknowledged the trust deficit their party faces.
Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson addressed the incident in a statement to Fox Baltimore. His words were measured to the point of saying almost nothing:
"My responsibility as Senate President is to uphold the integrity of the Senate and ensure that standards are enforced fairly and without bias."
Ferguson did not say what standards he planned to enforce, whether he had reviewed the footage, or whether any internal review was underway. The statement reads like a placeholder, an acknowledgment that something happened, paired with no indication that anything will be done about it.
The Daily Mail contacted Muse for comment and received no response. That silence, combined with his two conflicting accounts, one to police, another to Fox45, leaves the senator's credibility resting on a surveillance tape that appears to contradict his first story.
Muse represents District 26 in Prince George's County, a reliably Democratic area in Maryland. He has not been charged with any crime. But the gap between what he told a police officer at the scene and what a camera recorded raises straightforward questions about honesty, the kind voters tend to remember. Democrats at every level have struggled with accountability questions in recent cycles, and incidents like this one do nothing to close that gap.
The motorist who called 911 said she believed Muse was intoxicated. The parking attendant took his keys because he didn't look fit to drive. The responding officers privately agreed he probably couldn't drive. Yet Muse was never tested, never charged, and rode away in the back of a police cruiser, not in handcuffs, but as a courtesy passenger headed to his hotel.
When ordinary citizens hit a parked car and leave the scene, the process tends to go differently. When a Democratic lawmaker does it, gets caught on camera contradicting his own police statement, and walks away without so much as a citation, the system is telling you exactly who it was built to protect.
Accountability isn't supposed to depend on the letters after your name. If the footage shows what it appears to show, Senator Muse owes his constituents a straight answer, not a press statement, not silence, and not a story that changes depending on who's asking.