Tomorrow there’s a special election in Montana for an at-large congressional district. The winner goes to Washington to replace Trump’s Interior secretary, former GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke. The battle is between Bob Church, a 72-year-old Democrat and retired high school government teacher who plays the banjo and is always pictured rockin’ a cowboy hat, because… Montana. And in the Republican corner, there’s Greg Gianforte, a tech multi-millionaire (estimated worth: over $60 million). Backed by Donald Trump, Gianforte allegedly has ties to Russian companies via $250,000 in index fund assets.
Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs hit up Gianforte’s campaign headquarters in Bozeman, Montana to talk about those ties. Gianforte didn’t seem to like his questions, so, according to Jacobs, he body-slammed him and broke his glasses. Since this is the real world and American politics isn’t the WWE, that’s called assault.
The Gallatin County sheriff is now on the scene:
Gallatin Co Sheriff's Office on scene after @Bencjacobs reported being assaulted by Greg Gianforte. Medics on scene as well. #mtnews #mtal pic.twitter.com/PpKmnXb0c8
— Whitney Bermes (@wabermes) May 24, 2017
Here are tweets from the incident:
Greg Gianforte just body slammed me and broke my glasses
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 24, 2017
Listen to me get body slammed in Montana https://t.co/I8hAUsmuWw
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) May 25, 2017
This Gianforte guy took the, "I'm going to take on the media" thing, waaaay to far. Assault is a hell of a bad way to close a campaign. https://t.co/f9CZQVc10r
— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) May 25, 2017
https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/867542691948658690
Ben broke story about Gianforte having financial ties to sanctioned Russian companies https://t.co/MXcvQYz30A https://t.co/ALD5Npwvcr
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) May 25, 2017
Gianforte's statement: pic.twitter.com/WVNdA1yZ8w
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 25, 2017