McEnany: White House press corps making pandemic about themselves
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany joins 'Fox & Friends' after the president's heated press conference on COVID-19.
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White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany pushed back Tuesday after former Vice President Joe Biden argued that President Trump is trying to create a "diversion" by continuing to criticize the FBI's handling of the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“It is not a distraction to bring this up,” McEnany told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, arguing that "every American" should be troubled by what the FBI is alleged to have done.
McEnany said agents [wrote] down on a piece of paper" that they wanted to get Flynn to lie so that they could potentially get him fired from the administration.
McEnany referenced explosive handwritten notes that surfaced last month – written by the FBI's former head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap after a meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe – which Fox News is told suggested that agents planned to get Flynn "to admit to breaking the Logan Act" when he spoke to then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition period.
The notes revealed that top bureau officials discussed their motivations for sending agents to interview Flynn in the White House on Jan. 24, 2017 — and openly questioned if their "goal" was "to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
Last week, the Justice Department moved to drop its case against Flynn, in a stunning development that came after the internal memos were released, raising serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to Flynn’s late 2017 guilty plea of lying to the FBI.
During an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday, Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said that he was “aware” at the time of the investigation started by Obama administration officials into Michael Flynn.
During the interview Biden was pressed by George Stephanopoulos over what he knew about the Obama administration’s moves to investigate Flynn, and whether there was anything improper done.
DOJ'S FLYNN FILING RENEWS FOCUS ON MYSTERIOUS SUSAN RICE EMAIL FROM TRANSITION
“I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” Biden initially said, calling the topic a “diversion.”
Stephanopoulos, though, pressed Biden again, questioning whether he attended an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 5, 2017 – during the presidential transition period – in which Flynn apparently was discussed.
“No, I thought you asked me whether or not I had anything to do with him being prosecuted,” Biden said. “I’m sorry.”
“I was aware that there was — that they asked for an investigation, but that’s all I know about it,” he continued.
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On Tuesday, McEnany called what the FBI did to Flynn “incredible” and noted that it does not represent “our hardworking rank-and-file at the FBI.”
"This was some of the top officials in the Obama era and there are very real questions now that we know that President Obama was aware of the Flynn unmasking and the former vice president too.”
Fox News’ Gregg Re and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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