President Donald Trump was briefed that Michael Flynn had likely misled the FBI in late January, weeks before the former national security advisor was fired for lying about the extent of his contacts with a Russian diplomat, the president’s lawyer said Sunday.
Attorney John Dowd, who is the president’s personal lawyer, said that White House Counsel Donald McGahn had informed Trump that Flynn had likely passed inaccurate information to the FBI. But Dowd also said it was inaccurate to say Trump was told Flynn had lied to the FBI—only that Flynn’s account was the same as the misleading one Flynn had given vice president Mike Pence.
The question of Trump’s knowledge of Flynn’s false statements was raised unexpectedly Saturday morning, when the president tweeted that he had to fire Flynn “because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.” The tweet raised eyebrows, as lying to the FBI is a felony offense: the tweet suggested Trump had known about Flynn’s criminal act, but still kept him aboard his administration for weeks, firing him only after a Washington Post report made Flynn’s lies public. To account for the delay, then-press secretary Sean Spicer offered a tortured explanation involving an “evolving and eroding level of trust” in Flynn.
The White House scrambled to put distance between Trump and the tweet Sunday, with Dowd saying he had drafted it himself and that the wording had been sloppy.
“I’m out of the tweeting business,” Dowd said. “I did not mean to break news.”
