WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump issued a fresh denial Sunday that he asked former FBI Director James Comey to halt an investigation into the conduct of dismissed national security adviser Michael Flynn.
"I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn," Trump said in a pre-dawn message on Twitter. "Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!"
The tweet was the latest in a running commentary on the case from Trump that began Saturday, a day after Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his interactions with a Russian official.
In other tweets Sunday, Trump also seized on news that Peter Strzok -- the former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election -- was taken off that job last summer after his bosses discovered that he and another member of Mueller's team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging Trump and supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton. Strzok was also a key player in the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server, which ended without charges against her.
[DOCUMENT: Read Flynn’s plea deal, indictment]
"Report: 'ANTI-TRUMP FBI AGENT LED CLINTON EMAIL PROBE' Now it all starts to make sense!" Trump wrote.
After Trump's tweets, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned the president to tread cautiously. "You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril. I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I'd watch this," Graham said.
House Republicans responded to the report of Strzok's removal by drafting a contempt of Congress resolution against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray, claiming stonewalling in producing material related to the Russia-Trump probes and other matters.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of California and other committee Republicans, after considering such action for several weeks, decided to move after media including The New York Times reported Saturday on the details of Strzok's removal from the investigation.
FLYNN’S FULL STATEMENT
After over 33 years of military service to our country, including nearly five years in combat away from my family, and then my decision to continue to serve the United States, it has been extraordinarily painful to endure these many months of false accusations of “treason” and other outrageous acts. Such false accusations are contrary to everything I have ever done and stood for. But I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions.
December 1, 2017
[Via The Associated Press]
Republicans pointed to the reports as evidence that the entire probe into Russian meddling has been politically motivated.
Until now, Nunes said, the FBI and Department of Justice have failed to sufficiently comply with an Aug. 24 committee subpoena -- including by refusing repeated demands "for an explanation of Peter Strzok's dismissal from the Mueller probe."
On Sunday, as he commented on news about the reassignment of Strzok, Trump also retweeted a pair of posts on the subject written by Paul Sperry, a media fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution. One suggested that Wray should "clean house" because of the politicization of the agency.
A little later, Trump promised a better FBI under his leadership.
"After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters -- worst in History!" Trump wrote. "But fear not, we will bring it back to greatness."
ATTEMPT TO OBSTRUCT?
Trump fired Flynn 25 days into this administration for misrepresenting the nature of his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador, to Vice President Mike Pence and other administration officials.
Comey has alleged that the day after that, Trump urged him to be lenient with Flynn, producing notes that said Trump told him, "I hope you can let this go."
Trump stoked the controversy with one of his Saturday tweets in which he said part of the rationale for firing Flynn was that he had lied to the FBI.
"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI," Trump wrote in that tweet.
[RUSSIA REPORT: Documents on Russian interference in election ]
But critics pounced Saturday on Trump, arguing that if he knew at the time of his conversation with Comey that Flynn had lied to the FBI and was under investigation, it may constitute an attempt to obstruct that investigation.
"Are you ADMITTING you knew Flynn had lied to the FBI when you asked Comey to back off Flynn?" Walter Shaub, the former head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, asked in a tweet Saturday afternoon.
On Sunday, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Trump should have taken action against Flynn sooner if he already knew that then-national security adviser had lied to the FBI.
"Well, if he knew that then, why didn't he act on it earlier?" Warner said on CNN's State of the Union. "It raises a whole series of additional questions."
[PRESIDENT TRUMP: Timeline, appointments, executive orders + guide to actions in first 200 days]
Warner also told CNN that Flynn being charged with only one count of lying to the FBI suggests that there are "many more stories that General Flynn will have to tell about his time during the campaign and during the transition."
The Washington Post reported Saturday that Trump attorney John Dowd had drafted the president's tweet, according to two people familiar with the message. Dowd confirmed that Sunday, saying he had passed along a draft to Dan Scavino, Trump's social media director.
Two people close to the administration described the tweet simply as sloppy and unfortunate.
As Flynn pleaded guilty Friday, he made clear that he is now cooperating with special counsel Mueller as Mueller probes Russian meddling in last year's election and possible collusion with the Trump campaign.
Flynn's decision to cooperate with Mueller was widely seen as a sign of increasing legal peril for other White House aides and perhaps Trump himself, as the investigation has expanded beyond potential collusion with Russia to include obstruction of justice and financial crimes.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said given that Mueller could have charged Flynn with more crimes but instead limited it to just one offense, "Bob Mueller must have concluded that he was getting a lot of value in terms of Gen. Flynn's cooperation."
"I do believe he will incriminate others in the administration. Otherwise, there was no reason for Bob Mueller to give Mike Flynn this kind of deal," Schiff said Sunday on ABC's This Week, adding, "Whether that will ultimately lead to the president, I simply don't know."
FEINSTEIN INTERVIEW
In an interview Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said it looked to her that "what we're beginning to see is the putting together of a case of obstruction of justice."
Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said, "We see this in the indictments, the four indictments, and pleas that have just taken place, and some of the comments that are being made.
"I see it in the hyper-frenetic attitude of the White House: the comments every day, the continual tweets," she said.
Feinstein was referring to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates, who face charges including money laundering uncovered by Mueller's investigation; former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos; and Flynn. The latter two pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
"And I see it, most importantly, in what happened with the firing of Director Comey, and it is my belief that that is directly because [Comey] did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation," Feinstein said. "That's obstruction of justice."
Feinstein, 84, said her concern about the Trump White House "rises with the day" and hit a tipping point about a month ago. "There is a kind of instability, unpredictability," she said. "It's one issue after the other."
Asked Sunday on NBC whether Trump is a target of the investigation, Feinstein said she assumes that "many in the White House are under investigation in this" and that she doesn't believe that Flynn "was a rogue agent."
"I think he had to have been directed," Feinstein said. "Now whether the special counsel can find that evidence or not, whether we can, I don't know yet. But I see that that's where this is going."
In a separate Meet the Press interview, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said Mueller's investigation was "making progress."
Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she didn't know whether collusion had taken place between Russia and the Trump campaign, "but what we do know is there were conversations during the transition period."
Trump on Saturday said he was not worried about what Flynn might share now that he is cooperating with prosecutors, forcefully asserting that there was "absolutely no collusion" between his campaign and Russia.
Information for this article was contributed by John Wagner and Carol D. Leonnig of The Washington Post; by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times; by Billy House, Ros Krasny and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News; and by Ken Thomas, Eric Tucker and Hope Yen of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/04/2017