Trump-backed candidate sued for threatening to 'crush' Florida mom in a grocery store

Rep. Byron Donalds at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 15, 2024 (Image: Shutterstock)

The Daily Mail reports Trump favorite and U.S. Rep. Congressman Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) allegedly cornered a Florida mom in a Florida grocery store and vowed to 'crush' or 'finish' her, she has claimed in a new lawsuit.

The Trump-backed frontrunner in the Republican race for governor is accused of threatening and assaulting Kelly Mason in a gourmet Naples store in August 2022 according to her civil assault lawsuit, which comes just over a month before the state's primary election. Daily Mail reports the incident stems from a watch party for the local school board race, which Mason later won.

“Video of the altercation shows a visibly angry Donalds confronting Mason, who was suing his wife following a dispute over a local school,” reports Daily Mail. “… Mason, her husband, and her two children – 13 and 12 at the time – had left the upstairs dining area of Seed to Table to go downstairs to buy lunch meat. The store, which describes itself as 'the happiest place in the universe', is a MAGA hub that occasionally hosts political events.”

That, she claims, is when one of Donalds' aides called her over to speak with Donalds. She told her children to wait and walked over to where the Republican and his two staffers were standing with her husband.

"End it Kelly," Donalds is seen shouting, according to the video nabbed by Mason’s daughter. “... Kelly, you want to end it? Stop the lawsuits."

“[Then] … tell the truth,” Mason responded in the video.

“I'm going to go, but I'm tired of this,” Donalds said. “Don't do it in court, do it right now.”

“Byron becomes very belligerent, raising his voice, yelling at me; it was about dropping this lawsuit,” Mason told Daily mail. “… 'He was threatening me, and then saying he's going to crush me and come after me, and that I should drop the lawsuit with his wife, and he was very angry about the lawsuit against Erica.”

At the time, Mason was suing Erika Donalds over what she claims was a “hostile takeover” of a local charter school Mason founded in 2012, Mason Classical Academy. After the school opened in 2014, the Congressman was added to the academy's governing board and his wife was added to its advisory board.

Mason told Daily Mail that the Donalds attempted to gain control of her school, seeking to expand it into a chain of schools to turn a profit.

“They saw dollar signs, so they want to start a bunch of schools, and I said, 'No, we're not ready to start a bunch of schools,’” Mason claimed. “‘You want to start a school, go do that, but you're not taking Mason's success.’”

Donalds’ campaign spokesman Gates McGavick told the Daily Mail that the suit is “a baseless, politically motivated attack and shameful publicity stunt designed to damage Byron Donalds in the 2026 election.”

Mason alleges in the interview that Donalds attempted to gain control of the school she founded, accusing them of wanting to expand the newly minted and successful charter school into a chain of schools to turn a profit.

'They saw dollar signs, so they want to start a bunch of schools, and I said, 'No, we're not ready to start a bunch of schools,' Mason claimed. 'You want to start a school, go do that, but you're not taking Mason's success.'

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