CNN’s Brianna Keilar Tells Viewers to ‘Brace Yourself’ Ahead of Lengthy Trump Fact Check — Credits Him For Saying One ‘True’ Thing
Former President Donald Trump held a press conference on Thursday after closing arguments were made in his civil fraud trial in New York City. And when Trump talks, CNN is ready to provide all the facts that he conveniently left out.
CNN anchor Brianna Keilar warned viewers to “brace” themselves ahead of the factchecking segment that she and fellow anchor Boris Sanchez were about to deliver, because there was quite a lot to clear up. The pair had chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid as well as legal analyst Elliot Williams for reinforcements:
Keilar: We just have to fact check a lot and brace yourself, because this is going to take a moment there… Listen, the overarching message that he was really putting out there was he was saying that this is a [President] Joe Biden indictment. And it’s not. This is a civil fraud trial in New York. Joe Biden did not set this up.
He was going after the attorney general there in New York, Letitia James, he was calling her a “hack.” He was saying that she was corrupt. Keep in mind, there is someone else who went after her for an investigation she did, and that was Andrew Cuomo, the former Democratic Governor of New York. She uncovered and put out a quite detailed and well-supported report on his Covid death numbers that had been manipulated.
He was saying all along there there’s no evidence of fraud. Yes, there is. His attorney was saying that. Yes, there is. That has actually already been determined here, that he actually inflated the value of his assets by a factor of three.
Sanchez: Yeah. His attorney at one point made the argument that they made in court that real estate is an art and not a science. The square footage of a property is a determined thing that you can measure. It’s not really an art. The president, former president also made the case that his argument won in the Court of Appeals and that Judge Arthur Engoron is ignoring that because it’s not the result that he wants.
That’s actually a misrepresentation of what took place. The Court of Appeals scaled back the initial case that was made by Letitia James, uh, for example, determining that the statute of limitations had run out on certain charges, removing his daughter Ivanka Trump from the case itself. Very far from saying that that the appeals court sided with him. In fact, the appeals court would have shut the case down, according to legal experts, if they had felt that there wasn’t a case there.
That’s just the beginning of the factcheck, but Keilar did give Trump credit for saying one thing that was true:
Keilar: There is something he did say that is true, which is that he said the 40 Wall Street building is beautiful. And that’s actually true. It’s on the National Historic Register.
Sanchez: I’ve not seen it.
Keilar: It’s gorgeous.
Sanchez: That is subjective and so —
Keilar: You probably actually have seen it in the skyline. It is, uh, it’s a beautiful building, built in 1930 before Donald Trump was ever born, though it does currently bear his name.
Watch the full video above via CNN.
