Donald Trump Defends Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski After Battery Charge And Arrest

Republican front-runner Donald Trump Tuesday defended his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was arrested in the morning and charged with battery for a March 8 incident in which he allegedly yanked a reporter at a rally in Jupiter, Florida. Trump called Lewandowski a "very decent man" in a tweet posted to his verified Twitter account, saying video footage of the incident would exonerate his campaign manager.

Lewandowski was arrested and turned himself in voluntarily around 8 a.m. EDT after then-Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields filed a report with the Jupiter Police Department. In her police report, Fields alleges that Lewandowski grabbed her so forcefully that she almost fell to the ground as she attempted to ask Trump a question following the rally. In tandem with her account, the police obtained security footage of the incident before charging Lewandowski.

She posted pictures of bruising on her arm to her unverified Twitter account following the incident, saying Lewandowski had bruised her. Fields resigned from Breitbart shortly after the incident, and her colleagues, editor-at-large Ben Shapiro, national security correspondent Jordan Schachtel and editor Jarrett Stepman, have left the site in the weeks following, according to the trade publication Gorkana.

Lewandowski has repeatedly denied Fields' allegations, as has Trump himself. In a follow-up tweet to his first defense of Landowski, the GOP presidential candidate hinted that Fields was lying or had changed her original story.

Fields responded to Trump's tweet in a post from her unverified account, saying, "Because my story never changed. Seriously, just stop lying."

Trump has come under fire for violence at his rallies carried out by his supporters. The candidate has defended his supporters, instead blaming “disrupters” for causing violence.

“We don’t condone violence, and we have very little violence, very very little violence at the rallies," Trump said on ABC’s “This Week,” March 20, adding, “As I said in Phoenix, we had 21,000 people, we didn’t even have anybody stand up and try and disrupt. You know they’re disrupters, and they’re really stopping our First Amendment rights if you think about it.”