Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said that the NBC interview of Donald Trump that came just after the firing of FBI director James Comey was edited and that a “full transcript” would show that Trump didn’t act to obstruct justice by firing the man who was leading the investigation into his actions. The statement only serves to highlight one of Trump’s oddest statements on Twitter and one of the reasons why eventual charges of obstruction from the special counsel’s office seem almost dead certain.
At the end of August, Donald Trump suddenly tweeted that NBC newscaster Lester Holt “ got caught fudging my tape on Russia” in which Trump admitted that he fired Comey for his refusal to end the Russia investigation. Trump also claimed that NBC was “hurt badly.” Who “caught” Holt wasn’t explained. How the interview was “fudged” wasn’t explained. How this interview, which garnered big ratings for NBC and became a frequently rewatched segment, could have “hurt” the network wasn’t explained. There didn’t even seem to be a story circulated on Fox News or other Trump-supporting media to explain why Trump would suddenly make a statement about a more than year-old interview. Even for a Trump statement this one seemed … out there.
Even the most vocal Trumpettes seemed to have a bit of a problem figuring out how to fit this Trump statement into the rest of their mythology. Rudy Giuliani, who had earlier doubled-down on Trump’s firing Comey over the Russia investigation, made a sharp backtrack to say that it was “amazing what they can do with tapes,” and but also seemed unable to give any of the ingredients for this “fudge.”
The statement was left hanging for the better part of a month, but on Wednesday night, Sekulow returned to the interview during a segment on CNN.
Sekulow: You know that when there are interviews, there are edits and there is a longer transcript, and I will just tell you without disclosing any detail that when you review the entire transcript, it is very clear as to what happened.
What happened? Sekulow doesn’t explain. He just repeats the earlier claim from Giuliani that, no matter what Trump said, it couldn’t possibly be obstruction. Not obstruction. Anything but obstruction.
Certainly the interview was edited, at least in the sense that it was split into two parts and likely omits some material for length. It’s also possible the interview was edited to clean up the “umms” and “huhs” of the conversation, as is often done as a courtesy to both the person being interviewed and to viewers. Considering the excessively discursive nature of Trump’s usual statements, there had to be some temptation on the part of the folks behind the scenes at NBC to take apart his rambling sentences and reassemble them into something that looks more like a logical sequence, but the editors seem to have held back on that point.
What’s also clear is that the broadcast interview and available transcripts don’t omit anything significant. Sekulow insists that “when you look at the entire evidence” the interview is “not a federal case.” Except, of course, that it is. Though the interview with Holt is far from the only, or even the strongest evidence that Trump has constantly attempted to interfere with or obstruct the Russia investigation, it is certainly one of the best known and most obvious. That’s exactly why Trump, and Giuliani, and Sekulow keep returning to the interview so long after it happened, and why Sekulow admits that it’s been the subject of several discussions between Trump’s legal team and the special counsel’s office.
As the Washington Post reports, NBC released the full interview within days of the original airing. Everything is, and always has been, out there, visible, and in the public eye. There hasn’t been one word of Trump’s statement that’s been covered up or edited out. Not one moment that was “fudged.”
There may be a very fine line that Trump’s legal team can draw in how the statements are parsed. For example, Trump’s response on the connection between Comey and the Russia investigation is that it was ”on his mind” when he fired the FBI director. He never explicitly says “I fired James Comey because he wouldn’t end the Russia investigation.” He just implies it. Strongly.
Nothing in the interview or in NBC’s broadcast was fabricated or edited expressly to make Trump look bad. No one “got caught.” No one was “hurt badly.” The only “fudge” in the whole affair was Trump’s statement, which certainly resembles a certain brown substance.