Bret Baier: Trump ‘not 100 percent truthful’ in Fox News interview
Fox News anchor Bret Baier said Friday that President Trump was “not 100 percent truthful” during a recent interview with the network.
“I mean, the president’s rollout of explaining this has not been clear,” Baier said on Friday, referring to comments Trump made about payments his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen made to two women who say they had affairs with Trump.
Trump said in the interview aired Thursday on “Fox & Friends” that he only knew about he payments “later on.”
{mosads}But a secretly recorded tape released last month by Cohen appears to show him and Trump talking about purchasing the rights to the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who says she had an affair with Trump in 2006.
“The Washington Post says it’s a flat-out lie in their fact-checking. I think you could look back at the statements and clearly he was not 100 percent truthful as he laid that out,” Baier said.
Cohen pleaded guilty this week to making illegal campaign contributions in the form of payments meant to keep silent two women who say they had affairs with Trump. Money paid to the owner of the National Enquirer was meant to keep McDougal’s story from getting out. Cohen also paid $130,000 to adult-film star Stormy Daniels, who claims to have had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.
Cohen said the two payments were meant to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Trump originally said he didn’t know about the payments to Cohen at all. His attorney Rudy Giuliani later admitted that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for that payment.
Baier’s remarks were made in the context of news that Allen Weisselberg, the longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors working on the criminal investigation into Cohen. The Wall Street Journal reported Weisselberg’s immunity deal on Friday.
David Pecker, the chief executive of the company that publishes the National Enquirer, was also granted immunity, according to reports on Thursday.
“Federal prosecutors usually do not give immunity deals unless they know there is some information on the back end that they want to get to that increases pressure on the target that they’re going after,” Baier said.
“Who is that target, what is that going to look like — we don’t know the outlines of that, but it does seem like all of this is amping up in the days and weeks that we’ve seen just over the past two weeks,” Baier continued.