After spending the morning calling Michael Cohen a liar, President Trump turned his ire Thursday toward ex-national security adviser Mike Flynn, charging that he too was “making up stories” about the president to save his hide.
“They gave General Flynn a great deal because they were embarrassed by the way he was treated — the FBI said he didn’t lie and they overrode the FBI. They want to scare everybody into making up stories that are not true by catching them in the smallest of misstatements. Sad!” the commander-in-chief tweeted.
“WITCH HUNT!” he added in a follow-up, his usual response to bad news coming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
Flynn — one of Trump’s most ardent supporters, who’d led “Lock her up!” chants about Hillary Clinton at Trump’s MAGA rallies — held the White House job for only 24 days.
He pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia and will be sentenced in federal court in Washington, DC, on Dec. 18.
Flynn, according to Mueller’s team, had numerous contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which they reportedly discussed how to improve US relations with Russia, and then he lied about them when questioned by the G-men.
His Russian contacts came at the same time that the Kremlin, under Vladimir Putin’s orders, was meddling in the US election on Trump’s behalf, according to the US intelligence community.
Flynn wants to avoid any time behind bars, with his lawyers arguing that his extensive cooperation with the feds’ Russia probe earned him a break.
His lawyers this week requested that Flynn only be put on probation for a year for lying to FBI agents in their probe into Russian meddling and possible collusion with Trump’s campaign.
Flynn participated in 19 meetings with the special counsel’s office and other government bureaus and produced thousands of documents for the Justice Department, his lawyers said in a court filing.
Flynn is the only Trump administration official to plead guilty to a crime connected with Mueller’s sprawling probe into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election.
Earlier Thursday, Trump fired off a series of tweets accusing his former fixer and longtime lawyer Cohen of acting on his own when he arranged hush-money payoffs to a porn star and a Playboy centerfold.
Both women said they had affairs with Trump in 2006, when his third wife, Melania, was at home caring for their baby boy.
The feds charged that the payoffs were illegal campaign donations, while Trump — who first denied them — later changed his story and claimed that they were private transactions.
Cohen pleaded guilty and on Wednesday was sentenced to three years behind bars for lying to Congress and the FBI.
He said in court he acted on Trump’s orders to cover up the president’s “dirty deeds.”