White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged on Fox News that she had indeed made misleading statements to the media regarding the firing of former FBI Director James Comey after the claim was made in part of the special counsel’s report.
“I acknowledge that I had a slip of the tongue when I used the word ‘countless’ but it’s not untrue … that a number of both current and former FBI agents agreed with the president,” Sanders told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday, according to CNN.
Sanders also backed the President defending his decision to dismiss Comey, arguing that he was “a disgraced leaker who tried to politicize and undermine the very agency he was supposed to run,” and saying that firing him was one of the best decisions Donald Trump has ever made.
The report noted that the press secretary told Robert Mueller’s investigators that she made false statements about the firing, as a “slip of the tongue” and “in the heat of the moment.”
“Sanders told this Office that her reference to hearing from ‘countless members of the FBI’ was a ‘slip of the tongue’. 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 report read.
Sanders made the misleading comments on May 10, 2017, claiming that Comey was fired because the Justice Department, the President, lawmakers and the FBI had lost confidence in the former director. When her claim was challenged, Sanders continued by saying that “we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things.”
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