Breitbart’s senior leaders were faced with an uncomfortable situation after Donald Trump’s campaign manager allegedly manhandled one of their reporters — rally unquestionably behind the reporter, or give the benefit of the doubt to the GOP front-runner who has long enjoyed a cozy relationship with the publication.

In the end, it was Trump.


The conservative media outlet is now coping with an exodus of reporters and editors, and a lifting of the veil on its news operation, which critics have accused of being in the tank for Trump.

Over the past week, six media professionals associated with Breitbart have jumped ship, and sources at the company tell POLITICO that more staffers are planning to resign in the coming days. The bulk of them have fired off searing resignation notes, chastising the company for its lack of support for reporter Michelle Fields, who has filed a police complaint against Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and venting about the site’s pro-Trump bent.

"The company no longer resembles the ideals that inspired me to start writing for them three years ago. Some of us have been fighting behind the scenes against the party-line Trump propaganda for some time, but without any success, unfortunately,” wrote now-former Breitbart national security correspondent Jordan Schachtel in a statement announcing his resignation on Monday.

"Breitbart News is no longer a journalistic enterprise, but instead, in my opinion, something resembling an unaffiliated media Super PAC for the Trump campaign. I signed my contract to work as a journalist, not as a member of the Donald J. Trump for President media network.”

The furor has laid bare a rift in conservative media, which has struggled, like the rest of the press, to make sense of the rise of Trump. Breitbart, which officially launched in 2012, has been an outlier, unabashedly fawning over the Republican front-runner, after initially cheerleading for Ted Cruz’s campaign.

A recent article by Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, described the increasing violence at Trump’s rallies with effusive praise for the real estate mogul. While other media reported on Trump’s look of panic as a protester breached a security gate, Boyle penned a piece titled “Trump against the world” that said, "Trump, unfazed, responded forcefully: ‘Thank you for the warning. I was ready for him, but it’s much easier if the cops do it, don’t we agree? What a great job!’”

More evidence has emerged in recent days about top reporters and editors not only backing Trump but also currying favor with the billionaire businessman.

BuzzFeed on Sunday reported on emails that show Breitbart’s senior editor-at-large, Joel Pollak, inquiring with a former Trump staffer about a speechwriting job.

“I’m wondering if he needs a speechwriter. I know he speaks off the cuff, etc. But maybe someone to review talking points and so on,” Pollak wrote on Jan. 17.

Some critics have explained the unrestrained positive coverage as a traffic play that fits with Breitbart’s obsession with being the story and traffic. The site has aggressively expanded around the United States and the world, and has taken on a daily radio show on Sirius XM.

In January, it was reported Breitbart boasted around 17 million visitors a month to its website placing it ahead of the insurgent Independent Journal, which had fewer than 16 million visitors, and Glenn Beck’s Blaze, which clocked in at a little more than 13 million.

"This is a land grab,” Breitbart’s executive chairman, Steve Bannon, told The Washington Post in January. “It’s still the top of the first inning for all of this ... We’ve got The Washington Post in our gun sights."

Others have attributed the Trump kinship to the scrappy, outsider ethos that was associated with Andrew Breitbart before he died of a heart attack in 2012.

Regardless, the months of glowing Trump coverage proved to create an incendiary situation when Fields, backed up by Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, accused Lewandowski of roughly grabbing her arm and almost pulling her to the ground as she tried to ask Trump a question.

Breitbart’s shaky backing of Fields was an unusual move for a website that has in the past steadfastly stood by reporters even in the face of evidence it might be wrong. In fact one of those reporters it has stood by in the past — former editor-at-large Ben Shapiro — was one of the staffers who resigned in protest late Sunday evening.

In 2013, Shapiro wrote a piece for the site which suggested that former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was connected to a supposed group called “Friends of Hamas.” Despite attempted debunkings, the Breitbart team defended its reporter.

But now Shapiro — who also runs a website funded by Cruz donors and is open about his support of the Texas senator’s campaign — says the company which rallied around him in the past has sold out.

He ranted against Bannon and lamented that the late Andrew Breitbart’s legacy is being tarnished.

“In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News’ Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump’s bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle,” Shapiro wrote in his own resignation note.

Alex Marlow, Breitbart’s editor-in-chief, and Larry Solov, Breitbart’s CEO and president, did not respond to requests for comment. Bannon did not answer a phone call seeking comment.

Breitbart has been inconsistent, at best, in its response to the controversy that has enveloped it over the past week.

After Fields went public with the allegation that Lewandowski roughly grabbed her arm, enough to leave a bruise, the site released a statement pointing out that it was a Washington Post reporter who initially identified Lewandowski as the one who grabbed Fields and “if” it was him, he should apologize.

But as more reporting emerged, other figures in the conservative sphere began railing against Lewandowski, and Breitbart for not more vigorously defending its reporter.

For a day or so, it seemed as though Breitbart was hardening its defense of Fields, making its statements more forceful, saying it was standing “100 percent” with Fields and calling on Lewandowski to apologize. The site even “indefinitely suspended” another reporter, Patrick Howley, who seemed to question Fields’ allegations.

As Lewandowski began attacking Fields on Twitter, calling her an "attention seeker" who has a history of making false claims about sexual harassment, the site said it was “disappointed” in the campaign’s response. Internally, some staffers expressed a desire to go to “war” with Trump and his campaign for attacking one of their own. But management told them to hold back until a plan was formulated.

By Friday morning, though, the site published an unusual post that questioned whether Fields and The Washington Post’s Terris had misidentified Lewandowski. As more video emerged more clearly showing Lewandowski reaching for Fields, the site updated its post.

It was a stunning about-face for the website which said it was standing behind Fields “100 percent” and it seems to have been the final straw. First to jump ship was the site’s spokesperson, Kurt Bardella, a former aide to Rep. Darrell Issa who has tweeted negatively about Trump in the past. He said he was severing his relationship with the site, which he had represented through his communications firm. Soon Fields, Shapiro and three more staffers announced they were leaving.

On Monday, the site posted and then deleted a post mocking Shapiro, saying he was “abandoning” Andrew Breitbart’s widow and children for a job at Fox News. (Shapiro called the move “despicable” and denied ever seeking a position with the network.)

In a particularly cutting move, Breitbart posted the item under the pseudonym his father used while writing for the site — William Bigelow.

Shapiro's father, the writer David Shapiro, also resigned from Breitbart on Sunday evening.

According to the younger Shapiro, his father was hired under the pseudonym to protect his safety since the younger Shapiro said he received so many death threats for his writings.

"Breitbart put this under his byline because they knew I'd have to out him," Shapiro said in an interview on Monday. "The fact they would use my father’s pseudonym in order to attack me just exposes how despicable they are."

Throughout the entire weeklong drama, Breitbart has posted links and stories, both positive and negative, about itself to its website.

And it made another move to kick off the week — by Monday, Howley, the reporter who was suspended “indefinitely,” was back at work.