Amid news that former President Donald Trump’s accounting firm cut ties with him and disavowed a decade of financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organization comes a Facebook video with this title: “CNN confirms Trump WILL be ARRESTED.”
The Facebook video itself cites a Feb. 15 interview on the CNN show “New Day.” The financial statements are at the center of two New York investigations into whether Trump defrauded lenders.
In the clip, guest David Cay Johnston, a journalist and author of the book “The Big Cheat: How Donald Trump Fleeced America and Enriched Himself and His Family,” speculates that Trump will be indicted.
But that doesn’t mean that CNN confirmed the former president will be arrested.
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“New Day” anchor John Berman asked Johnston where he thinks the case ends for Trump and the Trump Organization. Johnston replied that a “Manhattan grand jury is eventually going to indict Donald Trump” and that “Donald Trump will be indicted on a state racketeering charge.”
“I’m confident of that,” Johnston said.
But he was merely offering his opinion, after being asked for his opinion by a CNN journalist.
We found no evidence that the network reported as fact that Trump will be arrested.
This post is similar to another claim we recently checked that “MSNBC announced Trump won (the) 2020 election.” What actually happened: A guest on an MSNBC show said that Trump won the election, which the show’s host then said was false.
So is the claim that CNN confirmed Trump will be arrested. We rate it False.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. It is republished here with permission. See the sources for this fact check here and more of their fact checks here.
