WASHINGTON — A retired Army Colonel running for Congress in one of the most competitive districts in the country tried to talk her way out of a drunk driving arrest in Georgia by invoking a two-star general at the Pentagon, according to body camera footage from the 2017 incident reviewed by this reporter.
The footage, long buried and now surfacing publicly, shows Laurie Buckhout — who ran in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District — telling the officer who pulled her over: “Tonight the two-star at the Pentagon asked me to stay late there to discuss our strategy for tomorrow.”
The arresting officer was unmoved.
“I can’t un-arrest you, because you’re under arrest,” the officer told her, according to the footage.
Buckhout had been stopped after failing to turn on her headlights. She initially refused a voluntary blood-alcohol test — a refusal that triggered her immediate arrest under Georgia law. When a breathalyzer was eventually administered, it returned a reading of 0.088 percent, just over the state’s legal limit of 0.08 percent.
The Pentagon name-drop didn’t work. Neither did anything else.
The initial DUI charge was later reduced through a plea agreement. Buckhout pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless driving, paid a $500 fine, and the case was closed. Her campaign later acknowledged the incident, with adviser Jonathan Felts saying she “deeply regretted” the decision to drive that night and praising the professionalism of the officers involved.
What the campaign didn’t address was what the bodycam showed: a retired colonel, accustomed to rank mattering, learning in real time that it doesn’t — not on the side of a Georgia road at night, and not with a breathalyzer reading above the legal limit.
The footage had circulated as a political weapon during Buckhout’s 2024 Republican primary, where opponent Sandy Smith repeatedly raised its existence. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee piled on, using the reckless driving plea to brand her as exhibiting an “appetite for lawlessness.”
NC-01 was rated a toss-up. She lost.
The footage, now in hand, shows something the campaign memos couldn’t fully capture: not just a candidate with a DUI on her record, but one who — in the moment of accountability — reached for her rank instead of her license.
The two-star wasn’t there. The officer was.
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