Trump campaign manager-turned-obsequious Beltway shill Corey Lewandowski is once again facing assault charges after singer Joy Villa accused him of slapping her butt not once, but twice, during a recent holiday party thrown by the Trump campaign.
Villa said a mutual friend introduced her to Lewandowski at the invite-only party at the Trump International Hotel in November. There, she posed next to him for a photograph, and “after the photo, he smacks my ass really hard,” Villa told Politico.
“I said, ‘Watch it,” Villa recalled. “Half-joking, I said, ‘I can report you for sexual harassment.’”
Villa claimed Lewandowski replied, “Go ahead, I work in the private sector,” before slapping her ass a second time.
After her account was first published last week, the singer told Politico she’s since spoken with police. Although she intended to report the incident as sexual harassment, Villa said she spoke with a detective who said the run-in would be considered misdemeanor sexual assault, not harassment.
“The detective I talked to said that sexual harassment is what happens in the workforce,” Villa said. “The detective told me, ‘what you describe happened to you is sexual assault.”
Villa, a longtime supporter of Donald Trump who recently began mulling her own run for office, says she plans to return to Washington to continue working with investigators. Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police confirmed to Politico that her report was given a case number and filed as a sexual assault.
Villa’s allegations mark the second high-profile time Lewandowski has been accused of assaulting a woman. In March 2016, Lewandowski—then head of the Trump presidential campaign—was charged with simple battery after he violently grabbed Michelle Fields, then a reporter for Breitbart, during a Trump campaign event in Florida. The charge was later dropped, but Lewandowski was later filmed manhandling a protester at a different Trump event in Tucson, AZ. He still remains close to President Trump, despite being fired from the campaign team before the election.
When asked by Politico why she waited almost a month to file a police report about Lewandowski’s alleged behavior, Villa answered simply: “I feared that it could backfire on me.”
“Ten times out of 10 the woman gets blamed no matter what,” she added.