Man found guilty of assault after Barron Trump told UK police he saw attack on woman

By Sana Noor Haq, CNN

London (CNN) — A man has been found guilty of assaulting a woman in a case in Britain that unexpectedly involved the US president’s son, who told UK police he’d witnessed the attack during a video call last year.

Matvei Rumiantsev, a 22-year-old Russian citizen, was found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm between January 17 and 18, 2025 and perverting the court of justice following a trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court, in east London, the PA Media news agency reported Wednesday.

The perverting the course of justice charge related to a letter that Rumiantsev wrote to the woman from prison after the attack, requesting that she withdraw the allegations.

Barron Trump, now aged 19, told UK police in a call on January 18 last year: “I’m calling from the US, I just got a call from a girl… she’s getting beat up,” according to a transcript.

“This was happening about eight minutes ago. I just figured out how to, how to call someone. It’s really an emergency.”

Trump, who said he’d met the woman on social media, later told police that the video call with the woman had been “brief” but “prevalent.”

He told police in an email that “a shirtless man with darkish hair” had picked up the phone, and seconds later Trump saw the woman “getting hit while crying.”

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the jurors that Trump’s intervention had helped prevent Rumiantsev from killing her, according to British media.

Rumiantsev was found not guilty of one count of rape and intentional strangulation relating to the same date when Trump had called British police on January 18, the court heard.

He was also found not guilty of another count of rape and assault alleged to have occurred in November 2024, according to PA Media.

As the trial unfolded last week, Rumiantsev recalled answering a video call from Trump during an altercation with the woman on the night of the attack.

Rumiantsev also admitted to being “jealous to some extent” over the woman’s friendship with Trump, claiming that he and the victim had had a dispute about it in 2024.

“I started to explain that I felt upset as well about her talking to Barron Trump,” Rumiantsev said last week.

“I was in no way controlling but I was trying to make her know that if she feels unwell seeing messages I had with girls 10 years ago, she could maybe understand how I felt when she was sat there this moment texting someone else,” he added.

When asked Friday if he was envious of men the woman might speak to, Rumiantsev said: “What I was really unhappy about was that she was frankly leading him (Trump) on.”

Later, prosecutors alleged that Rumiantsev had answered the call from Trump last January and prolonged the interaction to show “dominance” over the woman. Rumiantsev denied this.

Before the verdict was delivered on Wednesday, the judge called on jurors to treat Trump’s account of the alleged attack with caution.

Mr Justice Bennathan KC said Monday that if Trump had given evidence on oath or cross-examined in court, he may have been asked “whether his perception was biased because he was close friends with (the woman).”

Rumiantsev is due to be sentenced on March 27.

This story has been updated with developments.

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