(CNN) — Donald Trump’s campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was arrested and charged in Jupiter, Florida, with simple battery of former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, according to police.
The Jupiter Police Department told CNN that Lewandowski was arrested Tuesday morning after turning himself in on the misdemeanor charge of simple battery.
They said Lewandowski has been released and his initial court appearance is scheduled for May 4. The department also released new video that shows the alleged incident from an overhead angle.
Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks and one of Lewandowski’s lawyers, Scott Richardson, both released a statement Tuesday saying Lewandowski is “absolutely innocent of this charge,” and will plead not guilty.
“He will enter a plea of not guilty and looks forward to his day in court. He is completely confident that he will be exonerated,” the statement said.
Lewandowski’s arrest immediately raised fresh questions about his future with the Trump campaign. Trump currently has a sizable lead in the delegate race and is hoping to clinch the party’s nomination outright. With a “Never Trump” campaign effort aimed at stopping the GOP front-runner gaining steam, the latest development will only fuel Trump’s critics and serve as yet another distraction for the New York billionaire, who has moved from one controversy after another in this election cycle.
Trump came to Lewandowski’s defense on Tuesday, tweeting that his campaign manager is a “very decent man” and there’s “nothing there” in new video tapes of the incident released by Jupiter police.
The police report states that Fields came to the Jupiter Police Department on March 11, three days after the alleged incident at a Trump campaign press conference. According to the police officer who interviewed Fields that day, she indicated that after she asked Trump a question, she “felt someone yank her left arm” and that she “fell back but caught herself from falling.”
“Fields showed me her left forearm, which revealed bruising from what appeared to be several finger marks indicating a grabbing type injury,” the officer wrote.
After Fields went public with her allegation against Lewandowski, but before she went to the police, the campaign forcefully denied her claim, with Trump himself saying that he thought Fields “made the story up.” He also said that Secret Service officers who were present told him that “nothing happened.”
At the time, Lewandowski called Fields an “attention seeker” and called her “totally delusional,” adding in a tweet to her, “I never touched you.”
Trump’s press secretary Hope Hicks had also challenged Fields’ credibility, saying in a statement, “We leave to others whether is this part of a larger pattern of exaggerating incidents, but on multiple occasions she has become part of the news story as opposed to reporting it. Recall she also claimed to have been beaten by a New York City Police officer with a baton.”
The campaign has faced widespread criticism for not taking an allegation of violence seriously. Hicks previously said no camera captured the incident, when in fact a surveillance camera in Trump’s building did record it.
Trump’s remaining Republican opponents quickly responded to the charges.
Ted Cruz told reporters that there was an “abusive culture” on the Trump campaign.
“This is the consequence of the culture of the Trump campaign,” Cruz said. “The abusive culture, when you have a campaign that is built on personal insults, attacks and now physical violence, that has no place in our campaign, it has no place in our democracy.”
One senior adviser to John Kasich suggesting Lewandowski should be fired.
“If he worked for John Kasich he would be fired. Campaigns, though, always reflect the values of the candidate. I know ours does,” said John Weaver, Kasich’s chief strategist.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was not letting the incident go unnoticed either.
“It is a very serious charge the Trump campaign will have to answer for and obviously every candidate is responsible for the culture they create in their campaign,” campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN.
Lewandowski is being represented by Scott Richardson of The Law Office of Scott N. Richardson, P.A. in West Palm Beach and Kendall Coffey of Coffey Burlington in Miami. The campaign is referring all inquiries to Richardson’s law office.
Fields, a regular guest on cable news, was working for Breitbart News at the time of the incident. The website, a favorite of Trump’s supporters, eventually defended Fields, but it was widely criticized for a tepid initial response to the alleged assault.
The following week, Fields and several other staffers resigned from Breitbart. She said, “I do not believe Breitbart News has adequately stood by me during the events of the past week and because of that I believe it is now best for us to part ways.”
CNN’s Shawn Nottingham and Eugene Scott contributed to this report.
