Moelis banker who was filmed punching woman leaves his job
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Jonathan Kaye, the banker who was filmed punching a woman in the face amid a Pride celebration in Brooklyn this month, has left Moelis, a spokesperson for the bank confirmed Monday.
A page listing Kaye’s biography has been removed from Moelis’s website as of Monday. A managing director, Kaye had led Moelis’s business services franchise.
Moelis tapped Rick Polhemus to run its U.S. business services in Kaye’s stead, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. Polhemus will work with colleagues in Europe on international matters, the source added.
Kaye had been placed on leave June 10, the first weekday after a 10-second video surfaced showing the banker knocking a woman to the ground, then walking away as onlookers call him “an a--hole” and “a horrible person.” In the video, Kaye turns to the onlookers and tells them, “She f---ing threw s--- all over me” and walks away carrying a plastic bag, with a wet substance clearly visible across the back of his blazer.
Accounts of the June 8 incident differ, however.
A source close to Kaye told the New York Post the banker was surrounded by a group — accounts range between four and six people — protesting Israel’s military action in Gaza. The source said the group shouted slurs at Kaye before he was doused with a red and white liquid.
Kaye was “in fear for his physical safety when he was surrounded by an angry mob of agitators who encircled him, physically assaulted him and threw unknown liquids on him,” a spokesperson for the banker said in a statement, according to a Monday report in the Financial Times.
“Given the sharp rise in antisemitic incidents, any Jewish person in this situation would naturally feel threatened and feel the need to defend themselves and return safely to their family,” the spokesperson said, according to Bloomberg.
“They were marching, they had a flag, and Jonathan simply said something along the lines of, ‘You guys are on the wrong side,’” the source told the Post. “He tried to back away, but he was either chest-bumped or fell to the ground, smashing his knee and slicing his leg.”
The source said Kaye then got up and used only the amount of force that was necessary “to get out of there.”
A woman who told New York City’s NBC4 she was the recipient of Kaye’s filmed punch said June 11 that Kaye instigated the attack.
“There was nothing — no slurs were said whatsoever,” the woman, identified only as Micah P., told the outlet. “He was literally a tornado of violence.”