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Alec Baldwin Shoves Photographer, Fights Back on Twitter

By Deanne Katz, Esq. on June 20, 2012 | Last updated on March 21, 2019

Another photographer has fallen prey to Alec Baldwin's temper according to, well, the photographer himself.

Marcus Santos, who works for New York Daily News was photographing Baldwin outside the Marriage License Bureau in New York City early Tuesday morning. Baldwin and fiancée Hilaria Thomas had just picked their marriage license for their upcoming wedding.

Santos claims that Baldwin asked paparazzi to step back and then started swinging. Santos filed an assault complaint with the NYPD against the "30 Rock" star.

Baldwin's side of the story sounds very different.

Shortly after the incident, Baldwin tweeted that a photographer almost hit him in the face with a camera along with the arguably inflammatory hashtag "allpaparazzishouldbewaterboarded."

Baldwin claims that the photographer lunged and almost hit him in the face and that Baldwin was merely protecting himself. Below is the full clip from "CBS This Morning:"

The fact that the complaint, filed in New York City is for assault (and not battery) doesn't mean Santos is dropping his claim of physical harm.

Traditionally, assault was characterized as a threat of physical harm while battery required that actual harm was caused. But today many states no longer have a distinction between the two. In this case, New York criminal law on assault requires that some physical injury occurred.

It's not the first display of Baldwin's famous temper. The eldest of the famous Baldwin brothers made headlines just last year for refusing to turn off his iPad on an American Airlines flight.

It also isn't Alec Baldwin's first run-in with a photographer. According to an infographic by New York Daily News, Baldwin was acquitted of battery involving a photographer in 1995 and grabbed a photographer by his shirt in 2010.

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