Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, will not be prosecuted over a videotaped incident that shows him grabbing a female reporter at a campaign event last month, a Florida prosecutor announced Thursday.
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According to police, Lewandowski grabbed the arm of Michelle Fields, 28, as she and other reporters attempted to interview Trump, who was leaving a ballroom at the Trump National Golf Club on March 8.
Fields, who has since resigned from Breitbart, said Lewandowski forcibly grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back as she tried to ask Trump a question after a news conference.
“As state attorney I made the decision that this office will not be filing charges against Corey Lewandowski for battery”, Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg said at a news conference.
The records reviewed by The Palm Beach Post do not show how many battery cases opened by police did not result in charges filed by the State Attorney’s Office.
Trump also suggested Fields had faked the entire incident.
Michelle went on Megyn Kelly’s show last night on Fox News and said she will seriously consider civil charges if he is not charged criminally.
“This is an apolitical office”, Aronberg said, and the case was handled in a “non-partisan manner”.
Ms. Fields didn’t respond to a request for comment, but she took to Twitter to express her disappointment in the Florida prosecutor’s decision not to bring charges and anger that she hadn’t been informed directly ahead of the announcement.
She later released a photograph showing bruises on her arm which she claimed were from Mr Lewandowski pulling her back from the businessman.
Trump and his campaign, along with Lewandowski, denied the charge. Mr. Trump has said he doesn’t encourage violence.
“The matter is now concluded”, the statement said.
DeLay, a Washington Times radio host, also said Trump’s second and third place rivals in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, need not apologize for their earlier calls for Lewandowski’s dismissal, even though he’s been cleared. Aronberg said a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent said in an affidavit that security refers to the area around someone they are guarding as the “protective bubble”, and Fields entered it. It is possible that he was trying to protect Trump by creating space between him and a reporter who was too close for comfort, and didn’t mean to actually grab Fields.
Prosecutors, however, said that they did not meet with Lewandowski and, instead, only spoke to his attorney. Marco Rubio in Tallahassee and lived in the same dormitory for a time as Texas Sen.
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“I would have loved to have fired him”, Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a town hall event in March.
