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No, CNN didn’t confirm Trump will be arrested
If Your Time is short
- A guest on a CNN show said he thinks former President Donald Trump will be indicted. The network did not report that Trump will be arrested.
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.
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
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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.
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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.
Our Sources
Facebook post, Feb. 16, 2022
New York Times, Accounting Firm Cuts Ties With Trump and Retracts Financial Statements, Feb. 14, 2022
New York Times, Trump Fraud Inquiry’s Focus: Did He Mislead His Own Accountants?, Dec. 14, 2021
PolitiFact, No, MSNBC didn’t announce Donald Trump won the 2020 election, Feb. 10, 2022
CNN "New Day" transcript, Feb. 15, 2022
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No, CNN didn’t confirm Trump will be arrested
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