Guardian reporter assaulted by Republican Greg Gianforte on eve of special election

For­get Repub­li­can dirty tricks — how about out­right thuggery?

The Repub­li­can can­di­date for Montana’s con­gres­sion­al seat slammed a Guardian reporter to the floor on the eve of the state’s spe­cial elec­tion, break­ing his glass­es and shout­ing, “Get the hell out of here.”

Ben Jacobs, a Guardian polit­i­cal reporter, was ask­ing Greg Gian­forte, a tech mil­lion­aire run­ning for the seat vacat­ed by Ryan Zinke, about the Repub­li­can health­care plan when the can­di­date alleged­ly “body-slammed” the reporter.

“He took me to the ground,” Jacobs said by phone from the back of an ambu­lance. “I think he wailed on me once or twice … He got on me and I think he hit me … This is the strangest thing that has ever hap­pened to me in report­ing on politics.”

If that weren’t despi­ca­ble enough, Gian­forte’s cam­paign is now try­ing to blame Jacobs — the vic­tim of Gian­forte’s assault — for the crime.

A state­ment by cam­paign spokesman Shane Scan­lon blamed Jacobs for the alter­ca­tion, say­ing that he “entered the office with­out per­mis­sion, aggres­sive­ly shoved a recorder in Greg’s face, and began ask­ing bad­ger­ing questions”.

“Jacobs was asked to leave,” the state­ment reads. “After ask­ing Jacobs to low­er the recorder, Jacobs declined. Greg then attempt­ed to grab the phone that was pushed in his face. Jacobs grabbed Greg’s wrist, and spun away from Greg, push­ing them both to the ground.

“It’s unfor­tu­nate that this aggres­sive behav­ior from a lib­er­al jour­nal­ist cre­at­ed this scene at our cam­paign vol­un­teer BBQ.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Gian­forte and Scan­lon, a Fox crew was in the room, wit­nessed the assault, and cor­rob­o­rates Ben Jacobs’ account of being body slammed.

Fox News reporter Ali­cia Acu­na, field pro­duc­er Faith Man­gan and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kei­th Rai­ley wit­nessed the inci­dent, accord­ing to an account pub­lished by foxnews.com. After Jacobs asked Gian­forte his ques­tion, Acu­na wrote, “Gian­forte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him.

“Faith, Kei­th and I watched in dis­be­lief as Gian­forte then began punch­ing the man, as he moved on top the reporter and began yelling some­thing to the effect of ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ … To be clear, at no point did any of us who wit­nessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of phys­i­cal aggres­sion toward Gian­forte, who left the area after giv­ing state­ments to local sheriff’s deputies.”

Despite the fact that there is an audio record­ing of the assault along with eye­wit­ness accounts, Gian­forte has not yet been arrested.

From the Boze­man Dai­ly Chron­i­cle:

Gootkin added his office has retrieved the audio record­ing from Jacobs and has been in con­tact with Gal­latin Coun­ty Attor­ney Mar­ty Lam­bert. Gian­forte was not arrest­ed, and no charges were filed.