The assault on Michelle Fields has created a scandal that has seemingly reached fever pitch. Fields, a reporter for Breitbart, received little support from Breitbart after she was attacked by Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. The Trump campaign responded with a lie-filled statement and casting aspersions on Fields’ character, accusing her of making it all up. Breitbart, which has been in the tank for Trump and has made no attempt to hide it, did nothing but ask for an apology. Fields ended up filing charges against Lewandowski with the Jupiter Police Department. Kurt Bardella, Breitbart spokesman, resigned on Friday over Breitbart’s treatment of Fields. And Sunday night, both Ben Shapiro and Michelle Fields resigned from Breitbart as well.

Shapiro’s statement on why he left Breitbart is nothing short of epic, pointing out that the site has completely betrayed Andrew Breitbart’s original mission.

As a close personal friend and mentee of Andrew Breitbart’s, it saddens me tremendously to announce that as of 9:00 p.m. Pacific Time, I have resigned from Breitbart News as editor-at-large. I met Andrew Breitbart when I was seventeen years old and remained his friend until his tragic death; I signed on with Breitbart News two weeks before Andrew’s death because I believed in his mission.

I am proud of what we accomplished in the years following his death, fighting back against the leftist media and debunking the left’s key narratives. I have many good friends at Breitbart News, including editor-in-chief Alex Marlow and editor-at-large John Nolte, and I admire CEO Larry Solov for his dedication to ensuring a financial future for Andrew’s widow, Susie, and his four children.

Andrew built his life and his career on one mission: fight the bullies. But Andrew’s life mission has been betrayed. Indeed, Breitbart News, under the chairmanship of Steve Bannon, has put a stake through the heart of Andrew’s legacy. In my opinion, Steve Bannon is a bully, and has sold out Andrew’s mission in order to back another bully, Donald Trump; he has shaped the company into Trump’s personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News’ Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump’s bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle. I spoke with Michelle the night after the incident. She told me her story. That story was backed by audiotape, eyewitness testimony from The Washington Post’s Ben Terris, physical bruises, and video tape.

Both Lewandowski and Trump maligned Michelle in the most repulsive fashion. Meanwhile, Breitbart News not only stood by and did nothing outside of tepidly asking for an apology, they then attempted to abandon Michelle by silencing staff from tweeting or talking about the issue. Finally, in the ultimate indignity, they undermined Michelle completely by running a poorly-evidenced conspiracy theory as their lead story in which Michelle and Terris had somehow misidentified Lewandowski.

This is disgusting. Andrew never would have stood for it. No news outlet would stand for it.
Nobody should.

This truly breaks my heart. But, as I am fond of saying, facts don’t care about your feelings, and the facts are undeniable: Breitbart News has become precisely the reverse of what Andrew would have wanted. Steve Bannon and those who follow his lead should be ashamed of themselves.

Fields’ statement was much shorter, simply saying that she didn’t feel Breitbart had adequately supported her after the incident. And she was right. Screenshots of internal messages sent at Breitbart revealed that Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large, told staffers to stop defending Fields.

Clearly, Fields was right to resign. But after the resignations, things got really nasty — only this time, Shapiro was the target of their venom. They published a nasty smear piece, which eventually was deleted. Unfortunately for Breitbart, though, the internet is forever.

The entire piece was archived. Here’s the full text:

LOS ANGELES — Former Breitbart News editor-at-large Ben Shapiro announced Sunday evening via left-wing Buzzfeed that he is abandoning Andrew Breitbart’s lifelong best friend, widow, hand-picked management team and friends in pursuit of an elusive contributorship at the Fox News Channel.

Friends of Hamas could not be found for comment.

Shapiro, a Harvard lawyer and member of the State Bar of California, apparently violated virtually every clause in his employment contract during an appearance on The Kelly File last Thursday evening.

It was business as usual for the ambitious conservative gadfly, who is known to live on the edge, courting and then leaving a series of companies over the past several years.

Buzzfeed, a site that has been aiming to destroy Breitbart News since the moment Andrew Breitbart died, and which has predicted the demise of Breitbart.com for the past four years, rewarded Shapiro for his bravery by placing news of his resignation just beneath several other hot stories, including “This Wee Little Snake Taking Its First Breath Will Cure Anyone’s Fears,” and “2/26: How Two Llamas And A Dress Gave Us The Internet’s Greatest Day.”

The story ran next to a photograph of a baby snake hatching from its shell, apparently for emphasis. Somehow, Shapiro’s name was omitted from the headline on Buzzfeed’s home page.

Breitbart news editor-in-chief Alex Marlow was stupefied: “My friend Ben Shapiro broke the news on a website that asks its staff to drink their own urine? Impossible.”

Breitbart California editor Joel B. Pollak, Shapiro’s friend and fellow Orthodox Jew, expressed concern for his former colleague.

“I’m worried. I had enjoyed listening to Ben read Breitbart California stories, word for word, without attribution, on his morning radio show. Now what will he do for content?”

Breitbart News senior management issued a short statement: “Ben’s listicles will be missed.”

The mood was somber at Breitbart News’ Los Angeles office, where one staffer stared silently at promotional copies of Shapiro’s books, left behind on the shelves when the author stopped showing up for work, several years ago.

Alleged Fox News contributor Michelle Fields also resigned.

The anti-semitism present in the article wasn’t missed by anyone.

Joel Pollack tried to claim that the smear piece was all just a big joke:

Don’t believe that? Neither does Ben Shapiro.

Shapiro pointed out that Breitbart included his personal information, in what he believes was an attempt to doxx him.

They also posted the smear piece under Shapiro’s father’s pen name, William Bigelow. “The fact they would use my father’s pseudonym in order to attack me just exposes how despicable they are,” Shapiro said in an interview with Politico. Shapiro’s father, David Shapiro, had to write under a pseudonym because he received so many death threats. He also resigned from Breitbart on Sunday.

It’s rumored that many Breitbart employees have wanted to jump ship since this whole fiasco started. Employees were allegedly threatened with being fired if they spoke in support of Fields. The problem, though, is that Breitbart has a notoriously tough contract, typically with a non-compete clause, meaning that anyone who left might not be able to work for any other publication. Shapiro himself echoed this sentiment today:

Brandon Darby, the man who started as a liberal activist but then turned in the group he was working with when they planned to plant firebombs at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Austin, is known to be a hero who puts principles before politics. Even though he was branded a traitor by leftists, he still came forward and did the right thing. He’s since become an outspoken conservative, and works at Breitbart. Unsurprisingly, Darby is speaking up in support of Fields and Shapiro.

The entire scandal is sad, because Andrew Breitbart was a conservative hero. His death was a huge loss for the conservative movement. But seeing what has become of Breitbart could be even worse. They abandoned everything Breitbart himself stood for. They threw their principles out the window in order to align themselves with a con man who isn’t conservative in any way, and is exactly the kind of violent bully that Andrew Breitbart would have stood against. Quite frankly, what’s happened to Breitbart is horrifying. It’s time for conservatives to stop supporting them. Breitbart clearly isn’t there anymore.