Donald Trump has stood by his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who was charged with battery on Tuesday over an incident involving a reporter during a campaign rally earlier this month.



Although he initially denied that he had ever touched Michelle Fields, then a reporter for conservative news site Breitbart.com, footage released by police in Jupiter, Florida from Trump’s hotel shows Lewandowski forcibly grabbing her arm.

In a press conference on his plane on Tuesday afternoon, Trump defended his top staffer. “I think it’s a very, very sad day in this country when a man can be destroyed over something like that.” The reality television star, whose catchphrase on his show The Apprentice was “you’re fired”, nevertheless insisted, “I don’t discard people.”

The Republican frontrunner also questioned the claim that Fields was physically hurt by Lewandowski.

He said of the bruises on her arm, “how do you know those bruises weren’t there before? I’m not a lawyer. But, she said she had a bruise on her arm. I mean to me, to get squeezed, don’t you think she would have yelled out and screamed? Take a look at her facial expression, her facial expression doesn’t change. You say there are bruises on her arm? How did they get there? Who put them there?”

The police report states: “Lewandowski grabbed Fields’s left arm with his right hand causing her to turn and step back.” Fields showed police her left forearm which “appeared to show a grabbing-type injury”, according to the investigating officer.

I guess these just magically appeared on me @CLewandowski_ @realDonaldTrump. So weird. pic.twitter.com/oD8c4D7tw3 — Michelle Fields (@MichelleFields) March 10, 2016

Soon after the incident, Lewandowski tweeted that Fields was “delusional” and insisted that he had never touched her. He backed up this claim in an interview with Benny Johnson of IJ Review last week, to stand by his statement and insist he didn’t know anything about a police investigation.

At a town hall meeting in Janesville, Wisconsin, Trump invited the crowd to pass judgment on the tape, pivoting a question from an audience member on discipline in schools into a heated defence of Lewandowski.

“What did you think?” He asked the 1,000 assembled supporters inside the Janesville Convention Centre, calling for their opinion on the video.



“She’s a liar,” one woman shouted back to applause.



Another woman shouted: “I watched it on the widescreen and there was nothing!”



“I can’t destroy a man’s life,” Trump said. “He’s got a beautiful wife and children and I’m not going to destroy a man for that.”











In a statement shortly after the incident, Trump initially said, “I did not witness any encounter. In addition to our staff, which had no knowledge of said situation, not a single camera or reporter of more than 100 in attendance captured the alleged incident” and questioned whether “this is part of a larger pattern of exaggerating incidents”. In addition to being witnessed by Ben Terris, a reporter for the Washington Post, there was also contemporaneous audio of the incident.

Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, Katrina Pierson, a Trump spokeswoman, appeared on CNN to insist that Lewandowski would remain as campaign manager even if he was found guilty of the misdemeanor charge.

“Yes, absolutely,” she said when asked by CNN. Pierson also suggested that campaigns “should begin to change the rules of the type of access the press gets from here on” after this incident.

Trump and Pierson both continue to insist that Fields, who declined to comment to the Guardian, changed her story, a claim the reporter has denied on Twitter.

Because my story never changed. Seriously, just stop lying. https://t.co/1fz9cBHOuT — Michelle Fields (@MichelleFields) March 29, 2016

The incident occurred when Trump was leaving an election night press conference at his hotel in Florida. Fields attempted to ask Trump a question when Lewandowski forcibly grabbed her in front of Terris. Two days later, she wrote her account of the incident in a post on Breitbart.

Trump acknowledged the question, but before he could answer I was jolted backwards. Someone had grabbed me tightly by the arm and yanked me down. I almost fell to the ground, but was able to maintain my balance. Nonetheless, I was shaken.

Trump read an excerpt of this account aloud at his rally in Janesville, Wisconsin on Tuesday in a mocking voice and claimed “her statement changed big league”.

Lewandowski is scheduled to appear in court on 4 May, one day after the Indiana Republican primary.