President Trump’s outside lawyer said in a new interview that a president can’t obstruct justice.
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,” attorney John Dowd told Axios.
His comments come after Trump in a tweet over the weekend appeared to reveal he knew former national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI when he was fired.
{mosads}”I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies,” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
“It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!”
The tweet spurred controversy, as legal experts suggested if Trump knew Flynn had lied to the FBI and then asked Comey to drop the investigation, it could amount to obstruction of justice.
Trump in February said he fired Flynn because he lied to the vice president, but he did not mention anything related to what the former national security adviser told the FBI.
Dowd said the tweet sent out from the president’s Twitter account over the weekend was his “mistake.”
He said he had drafted the tweet, according to Axios. But Dowd claimed the tweet did not “admit obstruction.”
“That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion,” he told Axios.
Flynn last week pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his conversations during the presidential transition with Russia’s U.S. ambassador about sanctions related to the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.