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Critics react to
Trump's tweet on
firing Flynn
Trump's tweet on
firing Flynn
Story highlights
- Trump tweeted that he fired Flynn for lying to Pence and the FBI
- Critics are questioning when Trump learned Flynn had lied to the FBI
Washington (CNN)President
Donald Trump's tweet on Saturday about firing Michael Flynn from his
position as national security adviser is garnering a lot of attention
from critics -- with some calling it a possible admission of obstruction
of justice.
Trump
tweeted about Flynn's Friday guilty plea, in which the former national
security adviser said he lied to the FBI about conversations he had with
Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak during the
transition and disclosed that he is cooperating with special counsel
Robert Mueller's office.
"I
had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the
FBI," Trump wrote. "He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame
because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing
to hide!"
The
tweet immediately caught the attention of critics, who questioned
whether Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when the President asked
then-FBI Director James Comey to let the investigation into Flynn go.
California
Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence
Committee, tweeted, "If that is true, Mr. President, why did you wait so
long to fire Flynn? Why did you fail to act until his lies were
publicly exposed? And why did you pressure Director Comey to "let this
go?"
Walter
Shaub, a former director of the United States Office of Government
Ethics, also responded on Twitter to Trump's tweet, writing: "...just
couldn't resist commenting on Flynn. Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn
had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn?"
Shaub later added, "Tell us,
@realDonaldTrump, did you know Flynn had lied to the FBI when Counsel
to the President Don McGahn snubbed Yates as she tried to warn the White
House Flynn had been compromised? Did you know Flynn had lied to the
FBI when you fired Yates days after her whistleblowing?"
California Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu also reacted to Trump's tweet.
"THIS
IS OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE," Lieu tweeted. "@POTUS now admits he KNEW
Michael Flynn lied to the FBI. Yet Trump tried to influence or stop the
FBI investigation on #Flynn."
Former senior adviser to
President Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, tweeted, "If Trump keeps
admitting to obstructing justice, Ty Cobb might be right that the
Mueller investigation may wrap up sooner than we think."
Cobb is the White House special counsel overseeing the legal and media response to the Russia investigation.
An outside attorney for
Trump claimed the President's tweet "was a paraphrase" of Cobb's
statement Friday on Flynn's guilty plea.
"The
tweet was a paraphrase of Ty Cobb's statement yesterday," the attorney
for Trump's private legal team, John Dowd, told CNN. "I refer you to
Comey's testimony before Congress about FBI view of Flynn's answers."
However,
Cobb's statement on Friday does not say anything about Flynn's lies to
the FBI being a factor in his firing. That statement reads: "Today,
Michael Flynn, a former National Security Advisor at the White House for
25 days during the Trump Administration, and a former Obama
administration official, entered a guilty plea to a single count of
making a false statement to the FBI. The false statements involved
mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in
his resignation in February of this year. Nothing about the guilty plea
or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The conclusion of
this phase of the Special Counsel's work demonstrates again that the
Special Counsel is moving with all deliberate speed and clears the way
for a prompt and reasonable conclusion."
On Sunday morning, Trump denied asking Comey to drop the Flynn investigation.
The backstory
During
his testimony to Congress in June, Comey said Trump asked him in
February to drop the FBI investigation into Flynn centering on his calls
with Kislyak during the transition. Flynn was dismissed as national
security adviser after it emerged he had lied about the conversations to
Vice President Mike Pence.
Comey
wrote in his opening testimony that Trump said: "'I hope you can see
your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good
guy. I hope you can let this go."
"I
replied only that 'he is a good guy.'" Comey wrote, describing a
private meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on February 14, one day
after Flynn was fired; Comey then added: "I did not say I would 'let
this go.'"
In
her testimony in May, former acting Attorney General Sally Yates said
she alerted the White House in January that Flynn could be "essentially
blackmailed by the Russians."
"We believed that Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians," Yates told a Senate judiciary subcommittee in a high-profile hearing on Russia's meddling in the US election.
Yates
told the panel that she had a meeting with White House Counsel Donald
McGahn on January 26 to tell him that she had information that
statements by Vice President Mike Pence, based on his conversations with
Flynn, were false. She was joined in the meeting by a senior career
official in the Justice Department.
Trump fired Comey in May.
The White House said Comey was dismissed on the recommendation of
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff
Sessions. They cited Comey's handling of the probe into Hillary
Clinton's use of a private email server, a controversy that many believe
helped Trump defeat the Democratic nominee in the 2016 presidential
election. Mueller was appointed special counsel overseeing the Russia
investigation days later.
Steve
Vladeck, a CNN legal contributor and professor at the University of
Texas Law School, said Trump's tweet "certainly implies that, at the
time the President fired then-FBI Director Comey, he knew that Flynn had
committed a felony. So the question is whether he fired Comey at least
in part to try to protect Flynn from prosecution for a felony of which
he was already aware."
Vladeck
added: "I can't speak to how the special counsel would view this
statement, but it betrays an alarming lack of understanding of the
relevant legal rules on the President's part, or of the serious legal
jeopardy he could be in for actions he may wrongly believe are
appropriate."
Earlier Saturday, Trump also said he is not worried about
what Flynn might tell Mueller's team. When asked by reporters if he was
worried about what Flynn might say, Trump replied, "No, I'm not. And
what has been shown is no collusion, no collusion. There has been
absolutely no collusion. So we're very happy."
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