CNN Reporter Reads Trump His Rights — Says Whatever He Told Bret Baier on Fox News ‘Can Be Held Against Him’
CNN correspondent Katelyn Polantz effectively read ex-President Donald Trump his rights when she reminded him anything he told Fox’s Bret Baier “can be held against him” in court — and then ticked through that interview.
Trump sat for an interview with Bret Baier Monday night, just days after trashing Fox News and dancing a figurative jig over their loss to MSNBC the week of his indictment.
On Tuesday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Polantz ticked through that interview with Victor Blackwell and pointed out that the things he said to Baier “can be held against him” in court:
VICTOR BLACKWELL: A judge has issued a new order barring Donald Trump and his codefendant, well, not from revealing any materials handed over to their legal teams by prosecutors. This is in the classified documents case. In an interview that from last night, the former president offered a new reason for not giving the boxes to investigators.
TRUMP: Before I send boxes over, I have to take all of my things out. These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes. There were many things I would say were much, much more. Not that I know of, but not that I know of. But everything was declassified.
VICTOR BLACKWELL: CNN’s Katelyn Polantz joins us live from Washington now. Caitlyn, the former president says he had some golf shirts in those boxes, so he didn’t want to hand them over. He was too busy to look through them. Fit this defense explanation into what we already know about the case. What do you make of the new line?
KATELYN POLANTZ: Well, Poppy and Victor, I don’t know, if you ask any defense lawyer on the planet if it’s wise for their client to talk about the facts of the case after they’ve been charged and are heading to trial wanting to fight it. Most will say that that is not something that you should do.
Defendants are even warned, not, that they could be, anything they say could be held against them in the court of law once they are arrested. And Donald Trump is out there now on Fox News in this interview, essentially responding to many of the things that are alleged in this indictment.
Specifically, Bret Baier asks him about the subpoena he received. The subpoena where a grand jury demanded that he return any classified documents or documents with classified markings in his possession to the federal government. And here was what his response was there.
BRET BAIER: Why not just hand them over then?
TRUMP: Because I had a, boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don’t want to hand that over to NARA yet. And I was very busy, as you’ve sort of seen.
KATELYN POLANTZ: So Trump does appear there to be acknowledging the delay. And the next thing he says, that he did want to pull out his personal things before giving boxes back, things like golf shirts, other clothing. There is also another portion of this interview where he is asked about the Bedminster 2021 episode where he’s caught on an audio recording talking about and referring to a top secret or secret document in his hand waving documents around. Here’s what he said about that as well.
TRUMP: There was no document that was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or made up, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles…
KATELYN POLANTZ: So Trump is clearly acknowledging that he may have remembered that episode here. But when you get into the court, Victor and Poppy, there’s going to be witnesses. There’s going to be that audiotape that the Justice Department would be able to play at trial. And there will be people who were in that room who we know have already testified to the grand jury, would be very likely that they could be called back and testify at a trial.
And would Donald Trump take the stand and say those same things in court? That’s going to be a big question, because what he says on television may not be what he would also say under oath.
Watch above via CNN This Morning.
