Corey Lewandowski
Lewandowski, 42, has a long history with controversial candidates and causes.
Before becoming Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Lewandowski led the New Hampshire chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.
He met Trump in 2014 and took the reins of the Republican front-runner’s campaign in January 2015, months before Trump’s official announcement. He had no previous experience working on presidential campaigns.
But he has a reputation as a fighter. “I give him credit for having spirit,” Trump told ABC News after Lewandowski was caught in video grabbing a protester by the collar at a campaign event.
Now, Lewandowski faces a battery charge in an incident earlier this month in which he pulled a Breitbert reporter, Michelle Fields, away from Trump as she tried to ask the billionaire a question.
When he worked for a congressman in Washington, Lewandowski was arrested for carrying a gun into a House office building and charged with a misdemeanor. He said the weapon was accidentally left in his bag and filed a lawsuit seeking the return of his firearm and punitive damages. The lawsuit was thrown out.
He worked on a successful re-election campaign for U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and later served as an administrative assistant for the congressman. Lewandowski left his post in1999. Later, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal caught up with Ney, and he served17 months in prison.
Lewandowski managed the losing re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. Bob Smith, R-New Hampshire, who briefly left the Republican Party in 1999 for an independent run at the presidency.
He spent thenworked outside politics, including a stint as a marine patrol officer after graduating from a New Hampshire police academy in 2006, before landing at the Kochs’ group.
An active Twitter user, in the days after the Jupiter incident, Lewandowski took to the social media platform to attack the Breitbart reporter twice:
“Michelle Fields is an attention seeker who once claimed Allen West groped her but later went silent,” along with a link to a story on West’s alleged groping from the conservative propoganda site GotNews.com.
He followed that with another link to Got News, this time quoting the headline of the piece: “We’re Calling Bull---- On Michelle Fields.”
That piece demands video evidence of the incident and asks why the police have not charged Lewandowski with battery. Since then the video and the charge have made the story, and Lewandowski’s tweet, passé.