NFL heiress accused of purse-bashing lawyer: I’m the victim, and I didn’t say, ‘Jew’

She’s the victim.

That’s Jacqueline Kent Cooke’s side of the story about a bloody altercation between her and a California lawyer outside a swanky New York restaurant on New Year’s Eve.

Cooke is the socialite daughter of Jack Kent Cooke, the late Washington NFL owner.

Cooke was arrested after the sidewalk scuffle with Matthew Haberkorn, a personal injury attorney from California, who says the drama began when Cooke hurled a racial slur at his 77-year-old mother inside the restaurant.

The brouhaha made headlines because Cooke allegedly bashed Haberkorn on the head with a $300 designer purse made of mirrored acrylic.

Cooke, who has been charged with second-degree felony assault, doesn’t deny clocking Haberkorn on the head but strongly denies she said anything racially offensive to his family.

“It is so unfair because I didn’t do anything, I didn’t call anyone a Jew,” tells The New York Post. “Now I have people sending me messages saying that I should kill myself, that I should never have been born.”

She said she is not anti-Semitic and that her grandmother is Jewish, “so I am 25 percent Jewish,” she tells the Post. “I never said that word, I would never say that to anyone.”

The incident began in the busy line at the coat check at Caravaggio on the city’s Upper East Side.

Haberkorn told The New York Daily News that an impatient Cooke, who was in back of his family in the line, said to his mother, “Hurry up, Jew.”

Here’s Cooke’s take.

“We had a really nice dinner and were rushing to go to a friend’s apartment before the clock struck midnight,” Cooke, 29, tells The New York Post.

“We were right behind Mr. Haberkorn’s family in the line, but they were taking a really long time looking for their tickets, so I — ticket in hand — told his mother, ‘Excuse me, I have to get through.’ She clearly didn’t hear what I said, and immediately screamed at the top of her lungs, ‘She called me a Jew!’”

In Haberkorn’s version of the story, Cooke allegedly said to Haberkorn’s mother, “Hurry up, Jew.”

“What did you say?” Haberkorn’s wife, Linda Thomas, asked Cooke, according to the Daily News.

“Hurry up, Jew. I got places to be,” Cooke allegedly repeated.

“We all got places to be,” Thomas said she told her. “You know what? I take total offense at that. You’re small-minded.”

Haberkorn and Thomas allege that Cooke’s boyfriend joined in the rant, telling their four daughters, “Happy bat mitzvah, girls.”

Cooke maintains she was misunderstood.

“I was mortified and I tried to calm things down by explaining, ‘I didn’t call anyone a Jew, I was just asking to get through.’ But by this point, Mr. Haberkorn’s wife and his daughters were yelling at me, and everyone in the restaurant was looking. I had no idea they were even Jewish,” she tells the Post.

She said she and her date fled but that Haberkorn, who was in the restroom at the time of the coat check incident, came after them outside the restaurant “in a rage.”

“Mr. Haberkorn tried to push my boyfriend around, and I didn’t know what to do, so I hit him with my purse,” she tells the Post. “I was defending my boyfriend, I was frightened, I was scared, but I never intended to hurt Mr. Haberkorn.”

The scene was captured by one of Haberkorn’s daughters who filmed all the yelling and pushing. The video shows Cooke on the ground a couple of times, once after it looks like she tried to tackle Haberkorn.

Haberkorn told reporters that Cooke appeared to be drunk. She tells the Post she’d had more than a few drinks but insists she has a clear recollection of the incident.

She has been charged with second-degree felony assault.

Her lawyer has claimed in court that Cooke, too, was injured, suffering a broken finger. She has filed a cross-complaint against Haberkorn.

“The guy Haberkorn — who is a professional personal injury lawyer — did a number on me, then he looked me up, found out who my dad is, and saw dollar signs when he learned my name.” She continued, “He assumed I was a billionaire, which I’m not, I live on a budget like anyone else, I get a monthly allowance, I am not shopping on Madison Avenue, I take the subway, and I am very frugal. I am not Paris Hilton.”

Haberkorn’s attorney, Andrew T. Miltenberg, denied those allegations to the Post and said no civil suit has been filed in the case.

“Not surprisingly, Ms. Kent-Cooke has come up with yet another version of events, as she scrambles to avoid responsibility for her offensive behavior,” Miltenberg said in a statement to the Post.

“It was Mr. Haberkorn’s wife, not his mother, who clearly heard Ms. Kent-Cooke use the word ‘Jew,’ and we are advised that a number of restaurant patrons reported witnessing Ms. Kent-Cooke’s behavior and hearing her spew her anti-Jewish venom. And it was Ms. Kent-Cooke, who assaulted Mr. Haberkorn.”

He said Cooke’s suggestion that Haberkorn is “just after her money is Ms. Kent-Cooke looking to place blame instead of taking responsibility.

“The mere fact that Mr. Haberkorn is a civil litigator has absolutely nothing to do with Ms. Kent-Cooke’s anti-Semitic tirade directed at Mr. Haberkorn’s family. In fact, until it was confirmed by the NYPD, Mr. Haberkorn had no idea as to her identity.

“Even now, to Mr. Haberkorn and his family, she remains the woman that assaulted him, opened up two wounds on his head, and is now a beacon of prejudice, intolerance and anti-Semitism. The only difference, is that she encountered a man who is going to see that justice is served. That is what she is really upset about, isn’t it?”

Cooke is back in court on Feb. 15.

This story was originally published January 10, 2018 at 4:54 PM with the headline "NFL heiress accused of purse-bashing lawyer: I’m the victim, and I didn’t say, ‘Jew’."