NEW YORK -- Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields was attempting to ask Donald Trump a question after his surreal election night press conference on Tuesday when she was suddenly “jolted backwards.”

“Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down,” Fields recalled in a first-person account Thursday. “I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.”

That someone was Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Fields said she didn’t see who grabbed her, but that Washington Post reporter Ben Terris told her it was Lewandowski. Terris confirmed to HuffPost on Wednesday that he had witnessed the incident and wrote about it on Thursday.

“I quickly turned around and saw Lewandowski and Trump exiting the building together,” Fields wrote. “No apology. No explanation for why he did this.”

Lewandowski didn’t respond to calls seeking comment.

Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement Thursday afternoon that “the accusation, which has only been made in the media and never addressed directly with the campaign, is entirely false.” Hicks said she didn’t witness any such encounter and pointed out that none the more than 100 journalists present captured “the alleged incident” on camera.

Fields responded to the campaign's statement on Twitter with a photo of a bruise on her arm.

Lewandowski later tweeted a 2011 article about Fields being assaulted by New York City Police Department officers at an Occupy Wall Street protest and asked, "professional reporting or attention seeking?" He called Fields an "attention seeker" in another tweet, and pointed to a 2015 article claiming she had been sexually harassed by former congressman and conservative media figure Allen West.

Lewandowski has faced criticism from a wide range of journalists, some of whom have called for him to be fired.

Ben Shapiro, Breitbart’s editor-at-large and one of the site's most prominent writers, said in an email that he can’t speak for the editorial or management side of the company because he’s “not a part of or privy to those decision-making processes.”

“All I can say is that basic decency dictates that everyone should be calling for Lewandowski's firing today over the assault on a reporter,” Shapiro wrote. “Everyone.”

Several top managers at Breitbart, a conservative news and opinion site that's been broadly supportive of Trump this election cycle, have so far declined to speak out, including executive chairman Stephen Bannon, an influential conservative with close ties to Trump, and editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.

Breitbart News CEO Larry Solov said in a statement issued around 2 a.m. Wednesday that “it’s obviously unacceptable that someone crossed a line and made physical contact with our reporter,” adding that if Lewandowski was the perpetrator, “he owes Michelle an immediate apology.”

But Breitbart, known for fiery attacks against political adversaries, was restrained in its coverage Wednesday, merely aggregating a Politico story about the incident.

The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove wrote Wednesday night that Breitbart had rolled over for the Republican front-runner, suggesting that the news outlet is more loyal to Trump than to one of its reporters grossly mistreated by his top campaign aide.

Breitbart reporter Patrick Howley added to that perception when he questioned Fields' account of the incident in a series of since-deleted tweets.
Breitbart suspended Howley Thursday afternoon and a spokesman reiterated its support for Fields.

"Patrick Howley was speaking for himself and not for Breitbart News," the spokesman, Kurt Bardella, said in a statement. "Senior Management at Breitbart News believes his comments were inappropriate and has decided to suspended him indefinitely effective immediately. Breitbart continues to stand 100% with Michelle Fields and believes that Corey Lewandowski must accept responsibility for his actions and apologize."

Grove also reported in The Daily Beast piece that Lewandowski had acknowledged manhandling Fields in a conversation with Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle.

“Lewandowski’s explanation to Boyle, said these sources, was that he and Fields had never met before and that he didn’t recognize her as a Breitbart reporter, instead mistaking her for an adversarial member of the mainstream media,” Grove wrote.

Boyle did not immediately respond to a request for comment from HuffPost about The Daily Beast's account.

A campaign staffer should never forcibly grab a reporter, regardless of what outlet she works for. It would be particularly troubling if Lewandowski would consider such behavior acceptable if the victim were a member of the so-called mainstream media.

It's also surprising Lewandowski would act so aggressively considering that the interactions between Trump and reporters at the time of the incident weren't tense or combative, according to Fields' account.

"What made this especially jarring is that there was no hint Trump was done taking questions," she wrote. "No one was pushing him to get away. He seemed to have been happily answering queries from my fellow reporters just a moment before.”

But even if Trump had been done taking questions, she wrote, "Lewandowski would be out of line."

"Campaign managers aren’t supposed to try to forcefully throw reporters to the ground, no matter the circumstance,” she wrote.

While physical violence appears to be a new development in Lewandowski's relationship with the media, he was already known for being combative. He threatened to blacklist a CNN reporter from the campaign in November for leaving the designated “press pen” to cover a protest. Two months later, Fox News accused Lewandowski of terrorizing anchor Megyn Kelly in urging the network to replace her as moderator of a debate.

Very insecure campaign completely winging it with a candidate with no business running.

The establishment is looking hard for anything they can dump on Trump.

Politics -- move on

Freedom of Speech
Freedom of the Press

Is that not acceptable in the Trump Reich?

Outrageous behavior. No accident that he did that to a woman. And then he tries to smear her. This is what Trump has brought us.

I for one am sickened by this true story concerning events which DID actually happen. I bet trump called her a dumb inferior woman on the way out too and the entire audience stood at attention and saluted

sounds like he was in atoo big hurry to talk. he is a busy man.

Unacceptable Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Outrageous behavior. No accident that he did that
> to a woman. And then he tries to smear her. This
> is what Trump has brought us.


Trump is a New Yorker and that's how they are, honest. They tell it like it is. Everyone loved "Dirty Harry" the Clint Eastwood movies because they wished to be like him. Not like some panty waisted liberal cop who always gets it in the back in the end.

I just don't want to miss the rally with the book burning, got way too many old paperbacks clothing up the shelf. Danielle Steel? Stephen King? And all the ones with Fabio on the cover heh heh heh...

*clogging* erk.

Why didn't the Reich Minister punch her in the face and have her arrested?

She stuck a microphone in the Fuhrer's face and asked a question he didn't want to answer.

You can't do that in America. We have standards and laws against that kinda shit.

local... Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I just don't want to miss the rally with the book
> burning, got way too many old paperbacks clothing
> up the shelf. Danielle Steel? Stephen King? And
> all the ones with Fabio on the cover heh heh
> heh...


Start with Obama's book, book is as useless as wet toilet paper. Then do Hillary's "How I Fucked up the Bengahzi thing"

Obama's book Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Start with Obama's book, book is as useless as wet
> toilet paper. Then do Hillary's "How I Fucked up
> the Bengahzi thing"

I'd start with your Trump University degree Einstein.

Any politicians book should be good kindling.
Politicians ALL suck. Regardless of party. No one in politics, regardless of party affiliation, really, truly gives one damn about you, me or anyone but their own agenda. Sure would be nice to not to have to pick from the lesser of the presented evils but it never changes.

Instead of asking Trump questions - maybe reporters should just punch him or his staff right in the face to open up every interview.