Video from Tuesday evening’s Florida rally definitively shows Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbing Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields’s arm as she attempted to ask the candidate a question following his speech.
Despite the Trump camp’s outright denial that any such altercation occurred, viewers can see at the 10-second mark that Lewandowski reached with his left arm for Fields’s left arm, briefly grabbing her. Lewandowski’s grasp then broke before he reached again, this time on her left arm, which is where Fields showed she was bruised the day after.
Hours after the incident, Lewandowski told Breitbart’s Washington, D.C. editor, Matthew Boyle that he manhandled Fields, a source told The Daily Beast.
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Despite this, Breitbart News responded with a vague statement that did not entirely back up its reporter’s accusation.
“It’s obviously unacceptable that someone crossed a line and made physical contact with our reporter,” said the statement, issued under the name of Larry Solov, Breitbart’s CEO and president. “What Michelle has told us directly is that someone ‘grabbed her arm’ and while she did not see who it was, Ben Terris of The Washington Post told her that it was Corey Lewandowski. If that’s the case, Corey owes Michelle an immediate apology.”
Lewandowski did the opposite, however; on Thursday, he tweeted directly at Fields.
The Trump campaign echoed Lewandowski’s total denial after he continued to assert she was a serial fabricator.
“The accusation...is entirely false,” spokesperson Hope Hicks said. “The individual has never met Corey, nor had the only reporter that supposedly identified him.”
Breitbart helped support the Trump campaign’s assertion with its own story on Friday, claiming Terris misidentified a security guard as Lewandowski, using video taken from a local Florida television station.
After Fields filed a complaint with police against Lewandowski, the Jupiter, Florida, police department said Friday it is “investigating an alleged battery that occurred at 115 Eagle Tree Terrace (Trump National) on March 8, 2016.”
