A spokesperson for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign dismissed charges brought against campaign manager Corey Lewandowski Tuesday and defended his grabbing a reporter at a campaign event in early March.
Katrina Pierson, Trump’s national spokeswoman, predicted Tuesday to CNN that Lewandowski would be cleared of wrongdoing after the Jupiter Police Department charged him with a single count of battery for grabbing ex-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields at an event. She also argued that what Lewandowski did is no different than network cameras at a campaign scrum, during which she said she’s been “smacked around.”
“We actually have total confidence in our campaign manager and we feel he’s going to be exonerated,” Pierson told host Wolf Blitzer after the charges were announced. “This is no different, for example, when I am in the middle of the scrum and get smacked around by television networks. I don’t go and sue the television network because I have a cut on my arm from a camera.”
Pierson continued to defend Lewandowski’s actions throughout the interview, telling Blitzer that the campaign manager was “just walking through the crowd accordingly” when he grabbed Fields.
“Mr. Lewandowski is an integral part of this team. The campaign wholeheartedly supports him and we will see him through the entire ordeal,” Pierson added, piggybacking off a pair of tweets Trump sent out earlier in the afternoon. Trump tweeted that there was “nothing” in the video put out by the police department to suggest any sort of crime.
