After apologizing for calling Sarah Palin a “clown” on Thursday, Beck, who has acknowledged that Americans actually view him as a “clown” and a “monkey,” claimed in a blog post that he and the Palins have not had a relationship since the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) in 2011. Beck wrote that he suspected people were telling the Palins lies about him to drive a wedge between them.

But Breitbart News has exclusively learned from a source close to the Palins that the rift started when Beck, in order to gain publicity for himself, read on his radio show a private email Palin sent him without asking the former Alaska governor for her permission while the mainstream media and the institutional left were trying to blame the assassination attempt on Palin.

“The rift between Gov. Palin and Beck goes back to when Beck violated her trust by reading one of her private emails on the air without asking her permission,” the source tells Breitbart News. “It was right after the Gabby Giffords shooting, and Beck garnered a lot of publicity off of reading the email because up to that point Gov. Palin had not spoken publicly about the shooting.”