The very brief coverage on The Five of today’s FBI raid on Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, suggests that Fox News is or was still waiting for its talking points on the matter. But that didn’t stop White House correspondent John Roberts from working in a few pro-Trump talking points into his report – before the show moved on to talk about James Comey, Loretta Lynch and the Clinton email investigation.
The New York Times broke the news about the FBI raid:
The F.B.I. raided the office and hotel room of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, on Monday, seizing business records, emails and documents related to several topics, including payments to a pornographic film actress.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating Mr. Cohen for possible bank fraud, and the documents identified in the warrant date back years, according to a person briefed on the search.
On Fox’s Your World, where host Neil Cavuto is not a Trump lickspittle as most of The Five hosts are, Fox’s senior judicial analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano, told viewers how serious the matter is:
NAPOLITANO: There must be some evidence presented to a federal judge here in New York City sufficient to persuade that judge to sign a search warrant. To permit the FBI, in broad daylight, to raid an attorney’s office, particularly when that attorney has one client and it happens to be the president of the United States, that evidence would have to be such as to persuade a neutral observer, the federal judge, that it is more likely than not that among these seized documents is [evidence of? The video audio dropped out] crimes by Mr. Cohen or Mr. Cohen and the president.
But on the next show, The Five, there was no discussion about the fact that there is evidence Cohen or Cohen and Trump committed crimes. There was only a brief report from correspondent John Roberts. It followed a Fox News Alert at about 14 minutes into the show.
ROBERTS: We know now that the FBI raided not only Michael Cohen’s business office but also raided his apartment and a hotel room in which he has been staying. And I am told that the FBI took pretty much everything that they could find that was in the form of paper or electronic communications. Now we don’t know exactly what this has to do with, though in the course of seizing all the documents, it could have just been because they were there as part of it, not necessarily what they were looking for, were documents related to the $130,000 payment that Michael Cohen made in October of 2016 to Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels as a part of her agreeing to that confidentiality agreement she has been fighting with her attorney Michael Avenatti to get out of for some time.
Roberts went on to read a statement from Cohen’s attorney blasting the raid and highlighting the fact that the warrant came, in part, via a referral from (Fox boogeyman) Robert Mueller. “So that’s where we now have the tie between what’s going on here in Washington and what happened there in New York,” Roberts continued.
Actually, there is no real tie. As the Times explained:
The prosecutors obtained the search warrant after receiving a referral from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, who called the search “completely inappropriate and unnecessary.” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but most likely resulted from information that he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.
After what seemed like a thorough review of Cohen’s attorney’s objections, Cohen took a swipe at Avenatti: “Stormy Daniels’ attorney couldn’t wait to show his glee at this latest development.” However, Roberts did read a statement from Avenatti to Fox saying that, as he had predicted, Cohen has been “placed in the crosshairs” and “set up to take the fall” for Trump (by saying he knew nothing about Cohen's payment to Daniels) “and I do not believe he has the mettle to withstand it. If I am correct, this could end very, very badly for Mr. Trump and others.”
When Roberts concluded, cohost (and informal Trump adviser) Jesse Watters said, “Wow, John, serious developments, thanks a lot. We’re gonna continue to update you guys on this as we learn more.”
You’d think there was enough there to discuss without waiting for any further updates. But no. After only about three minutes on this bombshell, Watters moved on to a flashback of James Comey’s comments about Loretta Lynch’s directive to call the Clinton email probe a “matter” instead of an “investigation.”
The Five didn’t even post the report about the raid online.
Watch The Five give the FBI raid the brushoff below, from the April 9, 2018 The Five. Underneath that is Napolitano explaining, less than an hour before, the seriousness of the raid, from the April 9, 2018 Your World.