Fox News’ Cavuto: Bombshell Smith filing shows Trump 'resorted to crimes' to stay in office

03 October 2024

It isn't uncommon for conservative pundits on MSNBC to attack former President Donald Trump from a legal/criminal justice standpoint, but most of them are outspoken Never Trumpers — from hosts Joe Scarborough, Nicolle Wallace and Michael Steele to frequent guests like attorney George Conway and former GOP strategist Tim Miller. Fox News and Fox Business, in contrast, are full of right-wing pundits who vigorously defend Trump at every turn and attack criminal and civil cases against him as Democratic partisanship.

But Fox News' Neil Cavuto, on Wednesday, October 2, acknowledged that the allegations in a newly unsealed court filing by special counsel Jack Smith are troubling.

In the 165-page filing, unsealed by Judge Tanya Chutkan, Smith makes a detailed argument for moving forward with his election interference indictment against Trump. And Smith stresses that his evidence is compatible with the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 immunity ruling in Trump v. the United States — which said that U.S. presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for "official" acts as part of "core" duties but not for "unofficial" acts.

Smith's filing, Cavuto said, presents evidence alleging that Trump "resorted to crimes" to stay in the White House after losing the 2020 election.

Cavuto told Fox News viewers, "It was in this newly unsealed court paper we're learning that former President Trump resorted to crimes to cling to power after the 2020 election. We don't know much more than that."

The conservative Fox News host added, "A lot of this stuff was going to be coming out anyway. We're going to be getting the latest on that, and a legal look at what is being revealed here and whether it's giving us any new information, anything we don't know. The timing of this, of course, is little more than about five weeks before the general election."

Smith, in his filing, alleges, "When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results in seven states that he had lost — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (the 'targeted states')."

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