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Daniel Pollack was banned from using Uber after an incident early last year in which he allegedly made racially charged and anti-Muslim comments to a driver

Pollack is a political appointee at CNCS appointed by the White House

CNN  — 

A senior adviser who worked for disgraced Trump appointee Carl Higbie was banned from using Uber after an incident early last year in which he allegedly made racially charged and anti-Muslim comments to a driver.

Daniel Pollack is the senior adviser for public affairs at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), the federal agency that oversees national volunteering organizations like AmeriCorps. Pollack works in the office of external affairs, which was formerly headed by Carl Higbie, who resigned earlier this month over a slew of racist and of other inflammatory comments unearthed by CNN’s KFile.

Pollack is a political appointee at CNCS appointed by the White House. It’s unclear when Pollack joined CNCS, but a review of his social media accounts and the ones of his small PR firm, Callidus Communications, show Pollack hasn’t posted publicly since August, when Higbie was appointed to CNCS by the Trump administration.

Pollack worked with Higbie at the Trump-aligned Great America Pac during the 2016 presidential campaign. Before that, Pollack worked as a spokesman for Project Veritas, the organization run by conservative provocateur James O’Keefe.

A spokesperson for CNCS, Samantha Jo Warfield, referred CNN to the White House for comment. Representatives for the White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment from CNN sent on Monday evening and throughout the day on Tuesday.

Uber spokesperson Andrew Hasbun confirmed to CNN that Pollack was, and still is, banned from using the app following a March 2017 incident in Atlanta. Hasbun pointed to a statement the company provided to CBS46 in Atlanta, which reported on the incident at the time it occurred.

“As our Community Guidelines make clear, we have zero-tolerance for any discrimination. This rider has been banned from Uber,” a spokesperson told CBS46 at the time.

According to the CBS46 report, Pollack’s driver, Jasmine Coer, called the police after an “aggressive ride” that she says began with Pollack asking if she was Muslim because of her headwear. Pollack was one of multiple passengers in the vehicle at the time. The driver said she was not Muslim.

According to a copy of the police report obtained by CNN, Pollack “began yelling and cursing at her (Coer) and other customers” during his ride before being asked to leave the vehicle.

“He looks at me and I’m like, ‘Sir, get out of my car. I’m calling the cops,’ and he goes ‘I’m white. I’m a white attorney and you’re black,’” Coer said, according to CBS46.

Coer did not respond to repeated requests for an interview with CNN about the incident.

A witness who requested not to be named confirmed to CNN that Pollack made racially charged comments and physical threats in the Uber.

Coer recorded part of the incident and her video aired in the original report on CBS46. It shows her asking Pollack to leave her car.

“Didn’t you just call me a Muslim and said I’m black and you’re white, so can you get out of my car,” she says in the tape.

According to the police report, Pollack exited the vehicle after several attempts to get him out of the car, and then stood in front of the car and “placed his hands on the front hood stopping any forward movement.” Witnesses and police said he seemed intoxicated during the incident as he was mumbling and slurring his speech.

Pollack was charged with disorderly conduct. A court clerk told CNN the case was dismissed on a motion of the prosecution. The solicitor’s office in Atlanta did not return repeated requests from CNN for information as to why the case was dismissed.

Pollack’s former boss at CNCS, Higbie, resigned earlier in January after a CNN KFile report revealed that he had made disparaging comments about black Americans, Muslims, women, LGBT people, veterans suffering from PTSD and immigrants. Following his resignation, Higbie apologized, saying, that his comments didn’t “reflect who I am or what I stand for.”