Sarah Sanders admits to Mueller she made ‘unfounded’ statements for Trump
White House press secretary describes her clearly misleading statement as a 'slip of the tongue'
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Your support makes all the difference.Sarah Huckabee Sanders revealed to Special Counsel Robert Mueller what many of her critics have long claimed: she misled the American public while working for Donald Trump.
The White House press secretary revealed in her conversations with prosecutors that she inaccurately claimed to have received messages from FBI members in the wake of the president’s decision to fire ex-FBI Director James Comey.
At the time, Ms Sanders said she was receiving messages from “countless members of the FBI” that said they had lost confidence in the ex-FBI director.
In her conversations with the special counsel’s office, however, it was determined Ms Sanders’ claims were “not founded on anything.”
Ms Sanders instead described her false statement as a “slip of the tongue,” also revealing she spoke to the president shortly after the press briefing in which she lied for Mr Trump.
He told her that she did a “good job,” the report said, “and did not point out any inaccuracies in her comments.”
The massive, 448-page report was released Thursday with a significant level of redactions.
Ms Sanders “told the press after Comey’s termination that the White House had heard from ‘countless’ FBI agents who had lost confidence in Comey,” the report states. “But the evidence does not support those claims. The President told Comey at their 27 January dinner that ‘the people of the FBI really like [him],’ no evidence suggests that the President heard otherwise before deciding to terminate Comey, and Sanders acknowledged to investigators that her comments were not founded on anything.”
House Democrats are now calling on Mr Mueller to testify by May 23, describing the attorney general’s decision to withhold a full version of the report as “regrettable, but no longer surprising.”
Congress’ two top Democrats say the special counsel’s report “appears to undercut” Mr Barr’s assertion that it lacked sufficient evidence to conclude that Mr Trump obstructed justice.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said there’s a big difference between Mr Barr’s description of Mr Mueller’s report and what the document actually reveals. Their joint statement suggests that Democrats are prepared to press the obstruction issue even as the presidential election season approaches.
Meanwhile, Mr Barr announced his intention to provide a small group of lawmakers with a report including fewer redactions than the one released Thursday.
Additional reporting by AP
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