Alec Baldwin Shoots Himself In The Foot During ‘Rust’ Interview With Chris Cuomo, Doubles Down On Claim He Did Not Pull The Trigger After FBI Finds Otherwise
Alec Baldwin recently made some fairly inflammatory comments during a killer interview with former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, chief amongst them his claim that his status as one of Rust‘s producers precluded him from being held legally responsible for the killing of Halyna Hutchins.
Further, the actor claims that mainstream media outlets are out to get him following the tragic incident that ended the life of his film’s cinematographer and injured its director, Joel Souza.
Baldwin’s latest denial came not a day after the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) concluded that the gun that killed Hutchins and injured Souza could not have fired without Baldwin pulling the trigger.
“The gun could not be made to fire without a pull of the trigger while the working internal components were intact and functional [and the firearm’s hammer was fully cocked]”, concluded the FBI’s investigation, as per documents obtained by ABC News.
The FBI’s investigation contradicted the statement made by Baldwin during a previous interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, wherein the actor not only claimed that he had not pulled the trigger, but – in a second contradiction, this time of his initial recollection of the event – also that he didn’t cock the gun’s hammer.
At the time, the actor declared, “So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I’m not going to pull the trigger. I said, ‘Do you see this?’ She says, ‘Well, just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that.’ And I cock the gun and I go, ‘Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?’”
“And she says…and I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off,” he continued. “I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off.”
Claiming that he did not cock the gun, Baldwin would at a later recall that he was pulling “the hammer as far back as I could without cocking [it].”
Speaking to the equally disgraced Cuomo, Baldwin insisted that he did not pull the trigger, asserting that he was merely “fanning” the gun when it went off.
“If you pull the hammer back, and you don’t lock the hammer, if you pull the hammer back pretty far… in old Western movies you’d see someone fan the hammer of the gun,” the actor explained. “The hammer didn’t lock, you pulled it back to an extent where it would fire the bullet without you pulling the trigger [and] without you locking the hammer.”
Shamelessly shifting blame to Assistant Director David Halls, whom he refers to as the film’s safety officer, Baldwin went on, “The man who’s the principal safety officer on the set of the film declared that the gun was safe when he handed it to me.”
“The person who was the principal safety officer declared, in front of the entire assemblage, that this is a cold gun,” he reiterated. “So, why did he say that? If he didn’t know, if he hadn’t checked…”
He added, “The point is, all of us were told that everything was cool and you can relax and we’re working with gun that’s sage to rehearse with. But he explained it to me effectively, that’s exactly what can happen if you pull a hammer back and let it go, if there’s a live round.”
“So, there’s only one question to ask here,” he asserted. “Who put a live round in the gun? That’s it. There is no other question to ask.”
Cuomo then asked the actor for insight into what his lawyers were telling him about the possibility that, were the tragic incident to be ruled an accident, he could still be held accountable for his actions as one of the film’s producer.
“It depends on what grade of producer you are,” Baldwin said. “There are managerial producers who raise the money and spend the money and hire people. And there are creative producers who come in and the only authorities they have are over script casting; that’s the category I fall into.”
Following an interjection from Cuomo wherein he noted that Baldwin was “getting sued just the same”, Baldwin clarified,”Well, the production’s getting sued and I’m one of the five producers that is named in the lawsuit and we are all indemnified by an insurance policy.”
Running low on ammo, the actor took one last round of shots at mainstream media outlets, accusing them of attempting to harm his already tarnished reputation with the use of a rather contrived and disturbing analogy.
“If George Bush’s mother… if Barbara Bush fell through the ice on a pond, and I waded out into the pond and her saved life, [the mainstream media] would say I groped her sexually when I was pulling her out of the ice,” Baldwin bizarrely speculated. “I groped her. I squeezed her breast while I was pulling her out of the pond.”
“My point is, it doesn’t matter what you do,” he affirmed to Cuomo. “The ones that are out to get you are out to get you. And in this case, not even so much that kind of trash press — I mean anything [Rupert] Murdock and anything [The New York Post].”
Taking aim at the publication, Baldwin recalled, “I used to think it was something that cops and firemen and doormen read for the sports page, and all the rest of that vomit that constitutes the Post…I thought, ‘who reads this?’ But I was surprised to learn some of the people, over the years, who read the Post.”
A frustrated Baldwin next condemned the media for speculating on the chain of events that led up to the tragic shooting, complaining about the fact that “everybody’s waiting for a sheriff’s report.”
“The [District Attorney] is not bound by that report,” he explained. “The DA can bring charges or not bring charges, regardless of what the report says. But everyone must wait for that report. So while we wait ad nauseam for that report, I know that every single person on the set of the film knows what happened.”
Singling out the Los Angeles Times and The Hollywood Reporter, he further bellowed, “And the people that are talking loudest about what happened, or speculating about what happened, were not on the set of the film.”
“They talk on and on about ‘what if this’ and ‘what if that’ and have dined out on this, and the thing that they have in common is nobody was there, and everyone who was there knows exactly what happened,” Baldwin daringly declared. “They know exactly who’s to blame.”
Even if the FBI’s investigation was wrong and Baldwin truly didn’t pull the trigger, the disgraced actor was still ignoring the Screen Actor’s Guild safety bulletin, which clearly states that performers should never play with fire arms on set.
“Treat all weapons as though they are loaded and/or ready to use,” reads the document, which further stipulates, “Do not play with weapons and never point one at anyone, including yourself.”
“Anyone that will be using a weapon shall know all the operating features and safety devices,” it adamantly holds.
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