Breitbart spokesman quits over Trump incident

Kurt Bardella, a spokesman for Breitbart, has quit the company following an incident where one of its reporters accused GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s campaign manager of violently grabbing her.

{mosads}”When you reach a point where you can’t give 100% to people you represent, it’s not tenable to continue representing them,” Bardella said in a statement to The Hill.

Bardella, a former spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), also implied that Breitbart’s handling of the incident at the Trump event was his main reason for leaving.

“My own personal observation is that there is a cycle of behavior that is escalating and it’s happening exclusively at Donald Trump events,” he said in the statement. “It is wrong, disgusting and indicative of an ugliness that is contaminating the public and political discourse in our country. Life is too short to invest your time in things you don’t believe and aren’t passionate about. That is why I made the decision to resign from representing Breitbart.”

Michelle Fields, a Breitbart reporter covering Trump’s campaign, filed a criminal complaint against Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, whom she says violently grabbed her while she was trying to ask the real estate mogul a question. Her account was also backed up by Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, who was profiling several Trump staffers, including Lewandowski.

On Friday, Breitbart published an article that called into question Fields’s story, suggesting that she had misidentified Lewandowski and that someone else had grabbed her.

Buzzfeed reported later on Friday that Bardella left the company.