Fox News host: No one could expect Trump to vet Manafort and Gates for the things they're accused of

Harris Faulkner: “Is it fair to expect the Trump campaign … to go back” that far when vetting?

From the February 23 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered Overtime:

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HARRIS FAULKNER (HOST): We've learned -- and we knew this, we were just talking about this a moment ago previously with Catherine Herridge, our correspondent, who's working on these details as they come together in breaking news fashion this hour -- we knew that there were unsealed or rather sealed documents that were coming unsealed so we could see these 32 new counts against both Rick Gates and Paul Manafort. What have you learned and what can you tell us? 

MICHAEL BEKESHA (JUDICIAL WATCH): Sure, it looks like he's charging -- being charged on bank fraud and tax fraud. It looks as though he filed fraudulent papers with banks to get million dollar loans. He also seemed to not report everything on his taxes. Then there were issues with trying to get mortgages and whose houses they would be and maybe saying that his daughter was living one place where actually he was going to be using it. There are a lot of different -- there are a lot of moving parts. But again, none of it relates to the Trump campaign. Everything that took place happened beforehand or tangential to the campaign itself. 

FAULKNER: Michael, I know, as an attorney at Judicial Watch you're also exposed to kind of how people vet things. What would you say about the vetting process? Because it seems like there's been so much criticism for the Trump campaign. If it took the FBI this long to uncover some of this stuff, how could they have been expected to vet -- to be able to find out what these guys did all the way back to 2010 on their tax returns? Like where is the reality there?

BEKESHA: That's absolutely right. It's really difficult to vet people, and in the quick pace that the campaign was going. 

FAULKNER: But is it fair to expect the Trump campaign, or any other, to be able to go back and -- I mean that's almost a decade.

BEKESHA: It is almost a decade. It's not fair. It's also not really relevant to what these two individuals are brought on the campaign to do. They were brought on to help with the convention and make sure that the votes were going to be there. That's what their skill set was, that's what they were brought on to do. Nothing related to filing taxes, to getting loans involving the banks. And so everything that's -- they're being charged with has nothing to do with why the Trump campaign brought them on during the -- towards the end of the campaign.

Previously:

Fox & Friends ignores newest indictment against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates

Sean Hannity calls for charges against Manafort and Flynn to be dropped

Misinterpreting a judge’s order, right-wing media have convinced themselves that Michael Flynn is about to reverse his guilty plea