Alicia Acuna and her colleagues at Fox News Channel witnessed a sudden change in the race to fill the sole seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Acuna and her crew were preparing for a Thursday’s special election to air on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” She gave details of how she arranged interviews with the top two candidates. Republican Greg Gianforte and Democrat Rob Quist. Gianforte had a scheduled interview which was to take place at the Gianforte for Congress Bozeman Headquarters.
The three crew members met with Gianforte and they exchanged pleasantries as they made small talk about Bozeman and restaurants. As the conversation was taking place, Ben Jacobs, from the Guardian, stormed into the room with a voice recorder, he placed it on Gianforte’s face and started asking if he had a response to the newly released Congressional Budget Office report on the American Health Care Act.
In response, Ginaforte said that he would get back to him later. Jacobs was not going to give in easily, he persisted with his question. Gianforte directed Jacobs to Shane Scanlon, who is his press guy.
The incident took a different turn after Gianforte grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground. Acuna gave a statement of how they witnessed the incident in disbelief as Gianforte started punching the reporter.
Jacob yelled as Gianforte rolled on top of him. His glasses were probably broken. Acuna revealed that he approached her Fox crew and asked for their names. However, they declined to reveal their names. Jacobs said that he wanted the police authorities to intervene over the incident.
Gianforte realized how disgraceful his actions were and he, therefore, opted to apologize to the Fox crew. He later left the area after issuing a statement to the local sheriff’s deputies. Unfortunately, he has issued a citation for misdemeanor assault and he’ll have to appear in court before June 7.
A different statement issued by Scanlon indicated that Jacobs entered the campaign office without permission and aggressively shoved a recorder in Greg’s face and started asking pestering questions.
