Could Fox interview land Donald Trump in jail?: In his interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, former President Donald Trump said several things that could eventually be used against him in court.
Donald Trump Is Starting To Looking Insane
People who are under indictment for criminal offenses are generally not advised, by their lawyers, to give national TV interviews, mostly because things they say in court could later be used against them.
Of course, Donald Trump isn’t like most criminal defendants, and it’s also not exactly clear at this point who his lawyers are. He’s also an active presidential candidate, and indeed the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 race, so appear on television he must.
Trump did just that on Monday night, appearing on Fox News for an interview with host Bret Baier. The first half of the interview aired Monday, with more to come Tuesday, and much of the interview carried the chyron “Boxing Ring,” which was a pun referencing both the status of Trump’s boxes, and the back-and-forth nature of the interview.
Since the interview aired, multiple experts have stated that the former president may have gotten himself into even more hot water with comments he made to Baier. Trump’s statements in interviews, at rallies, and on Twitter have been used against him in legal proceedings before and certainly could be again as the case against him moves forward.
In the interview, which was much more adversarial towards Trump than Fox interviews he had sat for with the likes of Sean Hannity and Mark Levin in recent months, Trump stated, very falsely, that “I have every right to have those boxes. This is purely a Presidential Records Act, this is not a criminal thing.”
He went on to cite what he said was a New York Times article, stating that the only way the National Archives Records Administration (NARA) could get his records back was by saying “please please could we have it back.” This is obviously not the case, as NARA tried saying please, and when that didn’t work, Mar-a-Lago was raided. It’s not clear which New York Times story to which Trump was referring.
When Baier asked why he didn’t hand over the boxes when he was first asked, Trump described himself as “busy,” while he wanted to get “my personal things out” before handing them out. He also stated, falsely, that “everything was declassified.”
When asked about the accusation, in the indictment, that he had shown people a classified document about war plans for Iran — and had stated out loud, on tape, that he knew the document was classified.
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday, where it was stated unequivocally that “this interview did not go well for him,” cohost Mika Brzezinski noted that Trump had toggled between different defenses, sometimes stating there weren’t documents and other times claiming they were declassified.
“How excited are Trump’s lawyers that he’s answering questions about his 37 felony counts like he’s on the stand and Bret Baier is the prosecutor?,” Obama speechwriter-turned-podcast host Jon Favreau said on Twitter.
“The first rule of Federal Indictment Club is: you don’t talk about your case. And the second rule of Federal Indictment Club is … REALLY don’t do this,” conservative commentator Ed Morrissey said on Twitter. “Did Trump just admit to obstruction — on national television?”
It was, once again, a harder time than Trump has typically gotten from Fox News interviews. When Mark Levin interviewed Trump last month, he was widely mocked for starting the discussion with such fawning praise as “let me just say this, Mr. President. I’ve talked to a lot of important people: Supreme Court justices, presidents, presidential candidates, brilliant people,” talking with you is really the most impressive conversation I’ve had,” and “Number one, there’s very few people who could sit there and speak the way you do from subject to subject to subject to subject. If people would let you speak and actually listen to you.”
Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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