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Sarah Sanders admits she lied about FBI trust in Comey - and other false statements revealed in Mueller report
Sarah Sanders admits she lied about FBI trust in Comey - and other false statements revealed in Mueller report
Sarah Sanders admits she lied about FBI trust in Comey - and other false statements revealed in Mueller report
tulc(thought this was interesting)The Mueller report on Thursday revealed several instances when aides to President Donald Trump, while under oath, acknowledged that statements they once stood by were based on something other than facts or truth.
Take, for instance, the afternoon of May 10, 2017 when White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters that former FBI Director James Comey had been fired because he’d lost the confidence of President Trump, the Department of Justice and members of both parties in Congress. And, for good measure: “Most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in Comey.”
Sanders went on to say that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had decided “on his own” to examine Comey’s performance and then expressed his concerns to Trump about them on May 8.
A reporter challenged Sanders, saying Comey, in fact, had enjoyed support from the vast majority of FBI agents. “Look,” Sanders chided the reporter, “we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things."
But it was Sanders who said very different things when questioned by Mueller’s investigators about her comment.
“Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from ‘countless members of the FBI’ was a ‘slip of the tongue,’” according to the report. “She also recalled that her statement in a separate press interview that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in Comey was a comment she made 'in the heat of the moment' that was not founded on anything.”
The same incident found former White House spokesman Sean Spicer spreading misinformation about Comey's firing. The report determined that the decision to fire Comey had originated with Trump, who later pressed Rosenstein to own the decision.