Donald Trump has made an official statement regarding the Tuesday arrest of his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, for simple battery in connection with the mishandling of former-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields:
Wow, Corey Lewandowski, my campaign manager and a very decent man, was just charged with assaulting a reporter. Look at tapes-nothing there!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2016
The “tapes” in question include a recently released CCTV surveillance video that definitively shows Lewandowski grabbing Fields’ arm and pulling her away from Trump — something Lewandowski had previously wholly denied doing.
In an effort to deflect attention from his campaign manager, Trump then attempted to reframe the narrative as Fields inflating her charges:
Why aren't people looking at this reporters earliest statement as to what happened, that is before she found out the episode was on tape?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2016
Fields’ “earliest statement,” next to the surveillance video, largely checks out as factual. Sure, some of the wording (i.e. “yanked me down”) has been construed as melodramatic. But the video — at the very least — shows behavior by Lewandowski that Trump should (but won’t) disavow.
The campaign issued an accompanying press release saying Lewandowski is “absolutely innocent of this charge.”
“He will enter a plea of not guilty and looks forward to his day in court,” the statement reads. “He is completely confident that he will be exonerated.”
