Trump aide on Fox indictment story: ‘The damage is done’

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign manager on Friday suggested it doesn’t matter whether a Fox News report about an indictment of the Clinton Foundation is true.

“The damage is done to Hillary Clinton,” Kellyanne Conway said on MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour.”

{mosads}“No matter how it’s being termed, the voters are hearing it for what it is — a culture of corruption,” Conway said to host Pete Williams.

She pivoted to comments made by congressional GOP members such as Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Mike McCaul (R-Texas) to underscore that the Democratic nominee could be confronted with “all types of investigations” if she wins office on Nov. 8.

The country, Conway said, would “be living this nightmare” from the moment Clinton occupied the White House. 

Fox’s News’s Bret Baier on Wednesday said there would “likely” be an FBI indictment against the Clinton Foundation for alleged pay-to-play schemes, citing two sources with knowledge of the investigation. 

The story has drawn fierce pushback from Clinton supporters and other news networks, with NBC News, ABC News and CNN all reporting that Baier’s assertion is false. 

Baier has stood by most of his reporting on the FBI investigation but Friday walked back his remark about an indictment, saying it was “a mistake, and for that I’m sorry. I should have said they will continue to build their case.” 

“Indictment obviously is a very loaded word, Jon, especially in this atmosphere and no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment no matter how strong investigators feel their evidence is,” Baier told Fox News Channel’s “Happening Now” anchor Jon Scott. 

Trump had previously seized on a Baier’s report, mentioning it during a rally on Thursday in Florida. 

Williams, who is slated to host “The 11th Hour” for Brian Williams through Election Day, challenged Conway on not denouncing the report more strenuously.

“As a lawyer, you would concede indictment is not only a term of art, it’s a term of law, and that’s a big difference to use the expression likely indictment when all the reporting is to the contrary,” Williams said.

“Fine,” Conway responded. “It just doesn’t change what’s in voters’ minds right now and you see in the your own polling, you see in the other polling, Brian, which is — even though the polls were tightening before last Friday’s explosive announcement by Mr. Comey, you see that voters are putting it in this large cauldron of impressions and images and individuals and issues from which they eventually make a choice.”