On Friday, FOX News anchor Bret Baier apologized on air for falsely reporting (also known as lying) that he had verifiable sources that said it was “likely” that Hillary Clinton would be indicted on some sort of federal charges connected to alleged wrongdoing at the Clinton Foundation.
Said Baier,
“That just wasn't inartful. It was a mistake and for that I'm sorry. I should have said they will continue to build their case. ‘Indictment,' obviously, is a very loaded word, Jon, especially in this atmosphere, and no one knows if there would or would not be an indictment, no matter how strong investigators feel their evidence is. It's obviously a prosecutor who has to agree to take the case and make that case to the grand jury.”
The damage, however, had already been done, as The Washington Post reports:
…a day after the Fox News anchor walked back his earlier report that the FBI probe “will continue to likely an indictment,” his original claim lives on in some conservative news outlets.
As of Friday morning, Sean Hannity's website still has a story on its home page about Baier's “bombshell report.” Hot Air's home page employs the same language: “Bombshell: FBI's ‘far more expansive' Clinton investigations leading to ‘likely indictment.' “
A headline on Right Side Broadcasting's home page tells readers that “FBI sources believe Clinton Foundation case moving towards ‘likely indictment.' “
You can read a transcript of Baier's original remarks about the “likely indictment”, via Real Clear Politics, below.
BRET BAIER: Here's the deal: We talked to two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations. One: The Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far… Several offices separately have been doing their own investigations.
Two: The immunity deal that Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, two top aides to Hillary Clinton, got from the Justice Department in which it was beleived that the laptops they had, after a narrow review for classified materials, were going to be destroyed. We have been told that those have not been destroyed — they are at the FBI field office here on Washington and are being exploited. .
Three: The Clinton Foundation investigation is so expansive, they have interviewed and re-interviewed many people. They described the evidence they have as ‘a lot of it' and said there is an ‘avalanche coming in every day.' WikiLeaks and the new emails.
They are “actively and aggressively pursuing this case.” Remember the Foundation case is about accusations of pay-for-play… They are taking the new information and some of them are going back to interview people for the third time. As opposed to what has been written about the Clinton Foundation investigation, it is expansive.
The classified e-mail investigation is being run by the National Security division of the FBI. They are currently combing through Anthony Weiner's laptop. They are having some success — finding what they believe to be new emaisls, not duplicates, that have been transported through Hillary Clinton's server.
Finally, we learned there is a confidence from these sources that her server had been hacked. And that it was a 99% accuracy that it had been hacked by at least five foreign intelligence agencies, and that things had been taken from that…
There has been some angst about Attorney General Loretta Lynch — what she has done or not done. She obviously did not impanel, or go to a grand jury at the beginning. They also have a problem, these sources do, with what President Obama said today and back in October of 2015…
I pressed again and again on this very issue… The investigations will continue, there is a lot of evidence. And barring some obstruction in some way, they believe they will continue to likely an indictment.
