President Trump issued a fresh denial
Sunday that he asked then-FBI Director James B. Comey to halt an
investigation into the conduct of his dismissed national security
adviser Michael Flynn.
“I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn,” Trump said in a pre-dawn message on Twitter. “Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!”
The tweet was the latest in a running commentary on the case from Trump that began Saturday, a day after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian official.
In other tweets Sunday, Trump also seized on news that Peter Strzok — the former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election — was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered that he and another member of Mueller’s team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton. Strzok was also a key player in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, which ended without charges against her.
Trump fired Flynn 25 days into his administration for misrepresenting the nature of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador in Washington at the time, to Vice President Pence and other administration officials.
Comey has alleged that the day after that, Trump urged him to be lenient with Flynn, producing notes in which he quoted Trump as saying, “I hope you can let this go.”
Trump stoked the controversy with one of his Saturday tweets, in which he said part of the rationale for firing Flynn was that he had lied to the FBI.
“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” Trump wrote in that tweet.
But critics pounced Saturday on Trump, arguing that if he knew at the time of his conversation with Comey that Flynn had lied to the FBI and was under investigation, it may constitute an attempt to obstruct that investigation.http://www.eu-digest.blogspot.com
Read more: ‘I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn’: Trump goes on tweetstorm about the FBI - The Washington Post
“I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn,” Trump said in a pre-dawn message on Twitter. “Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!”
The tweet was the latest in a running commentary on the case from Trump that began Saturday, a day after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian official.
In other tweets Sunday, Trump also seized on news that Peter Strzok — the former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election — was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered that he and another member of Mueller’s team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton. Strzok was also a key player in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, which ended without charges against her.
Trump fired Flynn 25 days into his administration for misrepresenting the nature of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador in Washington at the time, to Vice President Pence and other administration officials.
Comey has alleged that the day after that, Trump urged him to be lenient with Flynn, producing notes in which he quoted Trump as saying, “I hope you can let this go.”
Trump stoked the controversy with one of his Saturday tweets, in which he said part of the rationale for firing Flynn was that he had lied to the FBI.
“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” Trump wrote in that tweet.
But critics pounced Saturday on Trump, arguing that if he knew at the time of his conversation with Comey that Flynn had lied to the FBI and was under investigation, it may constitute an attempt to obstruct that investigation.http://www.eu-digest.blogspot.com
Note EU-Digest: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”
Read more: ‘I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn’: Trump goes on tweetstorm about the FBI - The Washington Post
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