By Andrew Kaczynski and Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — A top oversight Democrat sent a letter on Thursday to Fox Corp chairman Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott demanding answers about Fox’s editing of a Donald Trump interview from June 2024 concerning Jeffrey Epstein — an edit they say both misled the public and distorted his position.

The letter from the ranking Democratic member on the House Oversight Committee, obtained first by CNN, accuses Fox of omitting key qualifiers in Trump’s response to a question about whether he would release Epstein-related documents. The letter requests Fox’s internal records about the interview and any communications with then-candidate Trump’s campaign about it — a request that Fox will surely refuse.

In the televised version of a “Fox & Friends Weekend” interview, Trump appeared to unequivocally support releasing the files. But in the unedited version — aired the next day on Fox’s radio platform and “Fox and Friends” — he hedged, expressing concern about “phony stuff” and the potential to “affect people’s lives.”

The edit attracted some attention at the time, but has gained more scrutiny in recent days, as Trump parries criticism from his own supporters over the administration’s attempts to shut down further disclosures about Epstein’s crimes.

The letter, from Ranking Oversight Member Robert Garcia, calls on Murdoch and Scott to explain the decision-making behind the edit and whether political considerations influenced how the interview was presented.

“Considering President Trump’s well-documented past social ties with Jeffrey Epstein, Fox News’s selective omission raises serious concerns that the network may have deliberately sought to shield then-candidate Trump from any further association with Epstein,” the letter states, adding, “it is legitimate to ask whether President Trump himself or those close to him may have actively encouraged” the edit.

In a statement to CNN, a Fox News spokesperson said “there was no selective or deceptive editing whatsoever.” The TV segment in question “had standard editorial cuts for time and the full answer to the question aired on the following day’s show,” the network said.

In the interview, co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy asked whether Trump would declassify “9/11 files” and “JFK files.” He said yes without hesitation. Then she asked, “Would you declassify the Epstein files?”

His answer, as it initially aired: “Yeah, yeah, I would.”

But in the full version that only aired later, Trump said, “Yeah, yeah, I would. I guess I would. I think that less so because, you don’t know, you don’t want to affect people’s lives if it’s phony stuff in there, because it’s a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would, or at least—”

Campos-Duffy interjected and said, “Do you think that would restore trust? Help restore trust?”

Trump hedged again: “I don’t know about Epstein, so much as I do the others. Certainly, about the way he died. It’d be interesting to find out what happened there, because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn’t happen to be working, etc., etc. But yeah, I’d go a long way toward that one. The other stuff, I would.”

Critics said the edited version that originally aired was egregious because it stripped away Trump’s uncertainty, presenting his stance in a more definitive — and politically favorable — light.

Trump took a keen interest in TV news editing last year when “60 Minutes” interviewed his then-rival Kamala Harris and aired two different parts of a controversial Harris answer on two different days.

Trump ultimately alleged “election interference” and sued CBS, resulting in a $16 million settlement with the network’s parent company Paramount, much to the chagrin of “60 Minutes” employees. The FCC, chaired by Trump ally Brendan Carr, currently has an open probe into CBS stemming from that edit.

Earlier this week, in a letter to Carr, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Ed Markey called out the Fox edit about Epstein.

“This selective editing appears to be far more misleading than the run-of-the-mill editorial decision-making in CBS’s interview with Harris,” the senators said.

Rather than arguing for an equivalent probe of Fox, the senators said, “the FCC should stop its partisan investigations into the news media and cease interfering with independent journalism altogether.”

The-CNN-Wire
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