Melissa Rein Lively, a US national who runs America First Public Relations, has been charged after an alleged racist attack at Bond Street Underground station in central London on 11 October. British Transport Police said the 40-year-old is due before Westminster Magistrates' Court on 19 May.

Police said a woman reported that she was racially abused and had her hair grabbed as she entered the station with her sister and two young children at 19:30 BST. It was also reported that pepper spray may have been used during the incident.

Rein Lively has been charged with assault by beating. Philipp Ostermann, 37, a German national and associate director of the Munich-based private equity firm Aequita, has also been charged in connection with the same incident.

Ostermann faces three public order offences, two of them racially aggravated, after what police described as a confrontation in which a man shouted racial abuse at the victim and a woman grabbed her hair. The case has now moved from allegation to court proceedings, with both defendants set to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court next week.

The incident has drawn attention because Rein Lively is described as a prominent Donald Trump supporter and a Maga influencer, a political profile that sits uneasily beside the accusations now before the court. The allegations, if proven, would point to an attack that was not just violent but overtly racist, in one of London's busiest transport hubs.

What happens next is straightforward: the court will hear the charges on 19 May, and the case will test the evidence behind claims that a public dispute at Bond Street Underground station crossed the line into racially aggravated abuse and assault.