'I feel badly for General Flynn': Trump sympathizes with disgraced former aide

Donald Trump said on Monday he “feels badly” for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty last week to lying to the FBI, and claimed without evidence that Hillary Clinton “lied many times” to the agency without consequences.

The president spoke after John Dowd, a lawyer who sought to take the blame for a Trump tweet which analysts said indicated the president was guilty of obstruction of justice over Flynn’s firing, offered a new defence of Trump’s actions: the president cannot obstruct justice.

Trump’s remarks to reporters before a trip to Utah were the latest in a series of outbursts over the investigation into his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, after Flynn’s guilty plea and admission that he is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller.

“I feel badly for General Flynn,” the president said. “I feel very badly. He’s led a very strong life, and I feel very badly about it. I will say this: Hillary Clinton lied many times to the FBI and nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it destroyed his life, and I think it’s a shame.”

Trump added: “Hillary Clinton on 4 July weekend went to the FBI, not under oath – it was the most incredible thing anyone has ever seen – lied many times, nothing happened to her. Flynn lied, and it’s like – it ruined his life. It’s very unfair.”

Michael Flynn is the fourth Donald Trump aide to face criminal charges in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and any alleged collusion.

Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI – ‘making false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements’ about his contacts with Russia.

Flynn, as part of Trump’s transition team between the November 2016 election and the January 2017 inauguration, had secret contact with the Russian ambassador on at least two topics - shaping US and Russian policy on sanctions, and attempting to influence a UN vote about Israeli settlement-building.

Flynn is cooperating with investigators, and under the terms of his deal agreed to take polygraph lie-detector tests and appear as a witness in all relevant cases.

He admits that he discussed with another senior Trump transition official what he should say to the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

At least two members of the Trump transition team were briefed by him after his contact with Kislyak.

Flynn faces a maximum prison sentence of six months under the terms of his deal and a fine of up to $9,500.

While new information reveals secret contact with the Russians, it does not shed light on whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia’s interference in the US election.

Trump did not provide details about his accusation against Clinton, who answered FBI questions in July 2016 about her use of a private server while she was secretary of state. The FBI never asserted that Clinton made false statements.

Flynn, a retired general who was a senior adviser in Trump’s campaign and his first national security adviser, has pledged to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump’s associates coordinated with Russian efforts to sway last year’s election in the Republican’s favour.

As part of the deal, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the presidential transition. Experts told the Guardian the wording of his plea agreement suggested he may already have been wearing a wire or recording conversations with other figures in the investigation.

Trump took aim at the FBI over the weekend, accusing it of bias in favour of Clinton during its investigation of her, which resulted in criticism but no charges. He questioned the direction of the agency and wrote that after director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May, the FBI’s reputation is “in Tatters worst in History!” He vowed to “bring it back to greatness”.

Flynn was forced to resign in February after it emerged that he misled Vice-President Mike Pence over discussions with Kislyak about sanctions on Russia. Trump said in a tweet on Saturday that he fired Flynn “because he lied to the vice-president and the FBI” about his conversations with the ambassador last December.

The tweet could signal the president took part in the obstruction of justice. If Trump did fire Flynn for lying to the FBI, that would mean the president knew Flynn had committed a serious crime when, according to the Comey, the president asked Comey the next day to halt an FBI investigation into Flynn.

Dowd, the lawyer who said he had written the tweet, told Axios on Monday: “The president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the constitution’s article II] and has every right to express his view of any case.”

Any suggestion the Trump tweet had admitted obstruction of justice, whoever wrote it, would he said be “an ignorant and arrogant assertion”.

Bob Bauer, a New York University law professor and former White House counsel to Barack Obama, was quoted by Axios as saying: “It is certainly possible for a president to obstruct justice.

“The case for immunity has its adherents, but they based their position largely on the consideration that a president subject to prosecution would be unable to perform the duties of the office, a result that they see as constitutionally intolerable.”

In his original attempt to contain the fallout from the Saturday tweet, Dowd told Reuters “the mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea. Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand.”

Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged. It was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for the president, he said.

“I’ll take responsibility,” he said. “I’m sorry I misled people.” Talking to NBC, he added: “I’m out of the tweeting business. I did not mean to break news.”

The suggestion that Dowd wrote the tweet was met with incredulity by Democrats and legal experts. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard law professor, wrote: “Anyone who buys Trump’s lawyer’s alibi for his corruptly treacherous client is a complete fool.”

Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer in the White House of George W Bush, said: “A lawyer who writes a tweet like that incriminating a client should be disbarred. He can tell Mueller he wrote it.”

To some critics, Dowd’s denial that the president can obstruct justice carried echoes of Richard Nixon’s assertion, to David Frost in 1977, that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal”. Others pointed out that the articles of impeachment against Nixon opened with the charge that he “obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice”.

The White House has yet to comment. Trump denies that he pressured Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Monday it was “absurd” to suggest that Flynn’s conversation with the ambassador could have influenced Putin’s thinking.