Fox News Anchor Bret Baier Compares ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Testimony on Trump’s Behavior to Watergate

Fox News anchor Bret Baier and legal analyst Jonathan Turley broke down the first part of Tuesday’s House Jan. 6 Committee hearing and noted the testimony was “jaw-dropping” and that the account of Trump lunging at his secret service agent was “stunning.”

“The committee is trying to say former President Trump was a threat, and that he wanted a coup, essentially,” Baier began.

“That’s what they are trying to say. Jonathan Turley is right to point out they always leave out the snippet of we are going to go peacefully and patriotically, they focus on ‘we have to fight like hell and fight for this,’” he continued, adding:

The part about the weapons and going through the mags and don’t worry about the mags, he wanted to go to the Capitol, and then the caricature of him, we heard through Barr in his book how upset he was but not the level of detail and specifics she’s laid out.

“I’ve covered politics a long time,” Baier added, before referencing testimony from Mark Meadow’s former aide Cassidy Hutchinson: “I don’t think there has been testimony like this, kind of jaw-dropping in a way on the inside workings of a White House in crisis after, you know, at this moment, January 6th, that we have seen since Watergate, really.”

“I basically lived with that team in the White House for four years, and I knew how insistent the president could be when he wanted to do something, even if it was not feasible in terms of security. But obviously, the Secret Service had a different idea of what could happen that day,” added anchor John Roberts, who served as a White House correspondent during the Trump years.

“Let’s bring in our legal panel, Andy McCarthy and Jonathan Turley, both are fox News contributors,” jumped in anchor Sandra Smith.

“Jonathan, I was quoting you earlier, but also looking at your most recent observation that in that moment where the secret service would have been refusing to comply with a direct order of the president to proceed to the capitol, you know I’m not sure of the authority to do so by a subordinate, but if so it made the president a virtual captive of a security team who simply refused to take a course it believed it would endanger him. You first,” Smith said, turning it over to Turley.

“Yeah, that’s a breathtaking moment and I cannot remember anything that would be its equivalent,” began Turley.

“The president is obviously the head of the executive branch. Everyone in that car was subject to his orders. I’m not too sure what the authority was. I understand the motivation, which was the best of motivations, you know, the security team did not believe they could protect the president under these circumstances,” he continued.

“And also understand a person of integrity in that position would refuse to do so, I’m surprised this altercation would have occurred and he did not prevail as the head of the executive branch,” Turley added, referencing Hutchinson’s testimony that Trump lunged at a secret service agent in an attempt to go to the U.S. Capitol.

“His authority seemed quite clear in that sense. I mean, these are counts really quite stunning, there seems to be taking a Johnny Depp turn in terms of the account. As Bret noted, the question is what are you trying to achieve here, this is not contributing to the building of a criminal case,” Turley concluded.

Watch the full clip above via Fox News