Two Breitbart News staffers who resigned from the conservative website, Michelle Fields and Ben Shapiro, spoke to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on Monday about why they left and how Breitbart editors handled Fields’ allegations that she was forcefully grabbed on the arm by a Donald Trump aide.
Fields, who has said that Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski grabbed her and pulled her away from Trump as she tried to ask a question, told Kelly that Lewandowski admitted to grabbing her.
“They knew the truth from the very beginning,” Fields said on Fox, referring to Breitbart editors. “My editor, as soon as it happened, had spoken to Corey. He told me that Corey had admitted to it, and I was getting an apology, so I stayed quiet. I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it.”
Fields said she decided to speak out about the incident when she realized how the Trump campaign would handle the allegations.
“I thought, I’m not going to make a huge deal, and that didn’t happen. I never got the apology,” she told Kelly. “Instead they embarked on this smear campaign against me. So they knew the truth, my company knew the truth, and they’re siding with Donald Trump.”
She said that her editors wanted to use the alleged incident to gain more access to the Trump campaign.
“When this happened, my Washington editor Matthew Boyle was telling me, ‘Oh don’t worry, this is going to be great because Donald Trump’s going to give us so many exclusives now because they’re going to feel like they have to do it because of what they did,'” Fields said on Monday. “This is how my company was looking at this. Instead of saying, ‘Wow, what happened, are you okay? Let’s defend you,’ they were thinking that this was a good thing because we would get more access to Donald Trump.”
Kelly noted that Breitbart and Lewandowski have denied that the phone conversation to which Fields referred took place.
“Well, let’s see what he says if, God forbid, we have to go to court and he’s subpoenaed and has to be on the stand testifying under oath,” Fields replied, referring to Lewandowski.
Fields also told Kelly that she filed a police report about the incident in an attempt to prove that the incident took place.
“I didn’t want to file a criminal complaint. I never wanted to do that. The reason I did is because I was being accused of putting makeup on my arm to show that there were bruises. I needed a report to show people that this happened,” she said. “This is a campaign that continues to lie. I never wanted it to get this way. Those bruises will heal. My problem is the smearing of my name, my reputation. I have to fight back.”
Shapiro, who resigned on Sunday in protest of how Breitbart treated Fields, told Kelly that the Trump campaign has launched a “sexist smear” against Fields.
“I mean, the fact that Corey Lewandowski was putting out reports from discredited websites, that he was accusing Michelle of being an attention seeker who had done this sort of thing in past in order to gain attention for herself,” Shapiro said. “You know, all that Corey Lewandowski had to do to stop this was apologize, essentially, and say that he didn’t mean to do it. That’s basically all that would have stopped this. Instead he decided to lie and to smear, and Breitbart decided to go right along with that.”
Shapiro told Kelly that “any objective observer of Trump — of Breitbart News could see for months that Breitbart had become a very, very strong advocate for Donald Trump.”
“And look, that’s their prerogative. Any media organization has the ability to set editorial. The problem for me became absolutely clear when they decided to abandon their own reporter and indeed undercut their own reporter,” he continued, explaining his resignation.
Watch the interview via Fox News:
