Tries to clean up trumps tweet, saying he knew general flynn lied to the fbi when he urged thenfbi director jim comey to drop the investigation into flynn. The president s tweet raising serious questions about whether the president obstructed justice. Heres Sarah Sanders late today. Look, the president knew that he lied to the Vice President. That was the reason for his firing. The problem is, that is not at all what the president tweeted four days ago when he fired off this tweet. Quote, i had to Fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the fbi. The white house has made it very clear, President Trumps tweets are, quote, official statements by the president of the United States. No matter who might draft, tweak, or actually type them. In this case, lawyer john dowd, the first person ever to take the blame for a president ial tweet. Trumps tweet and Sarah Sanders explanation simply are not the same. They contradict each other. They also dont match cnns reporting. A s
was under investigation and how could trump obstruct justice when he didn t know flynn was under investigation? they say that the white house had every impression baesed on what flynn told him he would be cleared? they write there could not have been intent to obstruct an investigation that had been neither confirmed for deny. ed. they had to assume that that investigation was not ongoing they say the letter at dresses more and it has to do with the crafting regards the donald trump jr. meeting.
house counsel don mcgahn told the president in february that flynn lied to the fbi and misled pence. pence ran the presidential transition team. we know pence was aware that flynn had contacted russia. but for a year now, pence has insisted that he didn t know flynn and the russian ambassador discussed u.s. sanctions against russia. court filings unsealed last week indicate a wide circle of trump advisers were aware of that. so how is it possible that the vice president, pence, the man in charge of the transition team, was one of the few who remained in the dark? sara murray is out front at the white house to begin our coverage. sara, obviously, these new charges coming. we re going to talk about that more in a moment with jim sciutto, but i want to ask you about the situation with the vice president. it seems like a lot of people knew pence was lied to. well, that s right, erin. as you point out, it s a little
when he appointed him to be national security adviser? correct. you wouldn t know that until he filed. nobody would have known that because he didn t file until two days ago. he filed a lobbying disclosure in november. that s different than filing a foreign request. it s one question friday. it s very much the other question is did flynn disclose he was acting as a foreign agent, in a security review before he came to the nsa? that s something i don t know. you ll have to follow up with general flynn on. bring in richard painter and cnn commentator, matt lewis. good evening to both of you. i m going to ask you, mr. painter, the white house is saying that the president didn t know flynn was being paid to represent turkey during the campaign. and you heard what sean spicer said. what do you make of this? this is complete chaos.
there s various reports that need to be examined closely. this is why we need an independent investigation. and because of the potential among members of the administration to have engaged in really what is criminal conduct, we should have this special prosecutor take this on. when you say i think it s very possible, do you have any sense of what we re talking about? obviously our chujim sciutto, e perez have confirmed that the intelligence officials have cob crated some elements of that russian dossier, although we don t know which ones. when you say it s possible he is hiding something, what are you referring to? i was referring to the negotiations taking place between civilians before the transition had occurred to president trump with a foreign power to change that foreign power s action and to undermine the policies of the united states of america. so trump as you know on that line said he didn t know flynn discussed sanctions with the russian ambassador. but the day after f