He was playing with a contact of his, a friend. It s understood secret service agents opened fire on a suspect, who then fled the scene by car. Donald trump s campaign released a statement in which the former president says: there were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumours start spiralling out of control, i wanted you to hear this first: i am safe and well. It wasn t long after that we got more comments from him as well, and a fundraising campaign note he sent to his supporters. He says he s never going to slow down, he s never going to slow down, he s never going to slow down, he s never going to give up, and he says his resolve is only stronger after another attempt on my life. Lots of images coming tine us from the scene and what happened afterwards. An image of the moment when security services surrounded the suspect has been released. He was detained in martin county by the sheriff s office on the northbound area of interstate 95, following an alert which told officers to be
assault, if that s actually what occurred, or if it s a felony and the county attorney s office decides that. and i have been in contact with marty lambert and i m confident we ll be visiting first thing in the morning. okay. sheriff brian gutkin of the gallatin county in montana, sheriff, thank you so much for joining us here on cnn. i appreciate it. all right. you bet. thank you. so back now to my panel. ana navarro,ed you wanted to s something on the other side of the break and i told you to hold it because we wanted to get the sheriff on the line. you listened to that interview. what are your thoughts? well, with you knyou know, fd of got stuck on jeffrey toobin s question of, is there an appropriate time in montana where somebody can body slam i think what he meant is, if you believe you re under assault, correct? well, look, i mean, to me, gianforte, you know, made two huge errors more than errors, you know, tonight. one was the act itself and another was the way
there s a lot that needs to be looked at. many questions that need to be answered. they are cooperating. they are cooperating with local authorities and this account, again, from a fox news crew. to be clear, at no point did any of us who witness this assault see jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward gianforte who left the area after giving statements to local sheriffs deputies. jason cant dor, who do you thin? it s clear he didn t do anything aggressive. he asked him a question. can t hit people, can t assault people. not just when you re running for office. you just can t do that. i have a son who s almost 4. we tell him he can t hit people. so i think the same standard should be applied to everybody else. in society. i think it should be applied to this gentleman. why is this happening now? you know, clearly there s something in the vitreal, there s vitreal in this political environment but let s be really clear, don, that should in no way excuse the behafr of
law enforcement authorities in montana to figure it out and investigate. it s going to be for the voters of montana to make a judgment, but i think for those of us reading it and hearing it, the conclusion we ve got to reach is that there was some form of assault. this guy lost his temper, completely flew off the handle. instead of accepting his mistake, is trying to make up some stupid story. i want to get at the rest of the panel in. alice, what dough yoi you think this? let me say first i haven t seen the video. i ve heard the audio. it is disturbing. i know ben. i ve work with him on numerous occasions in pt fiethe field, o the more mild-mannered reporters out there, very kind, very generous person. at times he s asked some questions we may not want to answer. based on what we re hearing in the audiotape, it sounds as though this like this person running for office went overboard and it sounds as though he took his anger out on ben in an inappropriate manner. we don t know. o
have the press conference live, but we re so glad that you could join us now. five other people were present for this. five other witnesses. is that correct? yes, that s correct. yeah. so tell me, to your knowledge, what happened? i can t give you a lot of information, because we re still interviewing the alleged victim and the witnesses. what i can tell you is right around 5:00 here just outside of bozeman in gallatin county, there was mr. gianforte was at his campaign headquarters. there were people there. then we received a report of an alleged assault. our deputies responded, did the initial investigation. from there, it was my understanding that the victim went up to the hospital and after that, we re continuing the investigation. okay. so you have spoken to him, correct? and all of the witnesses? we re i think we are we re actually currently with the victim still interviewing