Dana Perino brought former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore on to discuss the Don Jr. testimony and Trump's financial disclosures. He didn't have any good news for her.
May 16, 2018

With the release of transcripts and documents by the Senate Judiciary Committee, we now know that Don Jr. is a liar in the mold of his daddy, lying so hard he believes his own lies, apparently.

Today we learned that Don Jr. insisted he did not speak to Donald Trump about it but that Trump may have had some input into the statement issued after news of the meeting broke, delivered "via Hope Hicks."

Former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore was not your typical sycophant, but instead answered Perino's question honestly and fully with no silver lining for a hopeful Dana.

"There is not a lot of new stuff here about the Russian meeting at Trump Tower," he said. "But what is of particular interest to me is the efforts that were gone to, to sort of hide the purpose of the meeting."

Yes, well it's sticky when the purpose of the meeting is enlisting a hostile foreign power to dig up dirt on your opponent. Yes, indeed.

"It's clear now from the testimony and from statements that have been in the press for a long time that Donald Trump Jr. had an interest in getting information on Hillary Clinton and he expected to get that at the meeting," Moore explained.

He continued, "But when we hear that he didn't talk to his father about the meeting and didn't subsequently talk to his father but rather Hope Hicks apparently was in the middle of that, that almost defies credibility."

"If you think about it, what would the president be thinking when he is sitting there and someone comes to him and say, 'Hey, I want you to explain what this meeting was about' when he has no idea?"

"One problem we have got is Hope Hicks apparently took the privilege when she was called to testify in Congress, and, of course, we know what the president thinks about taking the privilege."

Well. That didn't go well. So Perino moved on to questions about Paul Manafort and his indictments, and notes the Judiciary Committee published which Manafort took on his phone at that meeting.

"It includes these things: Bill Browder, offshore Cypress, 133 million shares, companies, active sponsors of the RNC hired Glover, I think they had it wrong and she is tied to Cheney because she worked for him in the Bush administration," Perino listed. "It seems like none of those things fit together. But when you see them in a list at one meeting it does maybe raise some eyebrows."

YA THINK?

"I think that is right," Moore answered. But there was more: "I'm not sure that I put a whole lot of stock in the notes. I think what is more important is that you really had the campaign manager for Donald Trump coming out and participating in the meeting with somewhat I think is now a clear expectation that they were going to get some dirt or something that was going to sort of be mind-blowing at the time."

Perino scurried off that topic FAST. No follow-ups. No, nothing.

The final topic was Trump's financial disclosure, where Moore essentially told her that Trump lied to the American people -- he did -- and that the consequence of that was not knowing what to believe was true and what was false.

At that, Perino shut down the interview politely -- and rapidly.

On the one hand, it's good that Fox News actually put that out to viewers. On the other, I'm pretty sure they'll spend the other 23 hours of today making sure no one remembers that guy.

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