- President Donald Trump on Saturday night complained that the life of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn was “destroyed” over lying to the FBI, while “nothing happens” to Hillary Clinton.
- Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to one count of lying to the FBI as part of its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
President Donald Trump on Saturday complained of a “Rigged system” that he said was destroying the life of his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, while “nothing happens” to his former Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
“So General Flynn lies to the FBI and his life is destroyed, while Crooked Hillary Clinton, on that now famous FBI holiday ‘interrogation’ with no swearing in and no recording, lies many times…and nothing happens to her?” Trump said on Twitter. “Rigged system, or just a double standard?”
He complained in a following tweet that there was “No justice!” in the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s emails.
“Many people in our Country are asking what the ‘Justice’ Department is going to do about the fact that totally Crooked Hillary, AFTER receiving a subpoena from the United States Congress, deleted and ‘acid washed’ 33,000 Emails?”
Earlier on Saturday, Trump had taken to Twitter to defend Flynn, who had pleaded guilty the previous day to one count of making false statement to investigators in January about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak during Trump’s transition to the presidency.
“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” he wrote. “He has pleaded guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”
Flynn was forced to resign in February after reports that he had spoken to Kislyak about US sanctions on Russia on December 29 – the same day then-President Barack Obama had imposed sanctions. Trump told reporters at the time that he was forced to fire Flynn because he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations with Kislyak. Trump said nothing at the time, however, that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI in a January interview.
Trump’s Saturday tweet was widely perceived by legal experts as inadvertently bolstering an obstruction-of-justice case against Trump, as it appears to indicate he was aware Flynn had lied to the FBI at the time of Flynn’s firing.
Experts said if Trump knew that Flynn was in the FBI’s crosshairs when he asked former FBI Director James Comey, whom he later fired, to consider “letting Flynn go” the day after Flynn resigned, that could strengthen the obstruction case federal prosecutors are building against him.
Natasha Bertrand and Sonam Sheth contributed reporting.
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