President Donald Trump's attorney should resign if he wants to take responsibility for writing a tweet over the weekend that suggested Trump knew his former adviser lied to the FBI when he asked the agency's director to drop an investigation on him, a key Senator and longtime critic said on Monday.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal said it was ridiculous for Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, to try to deflect blame away from the president and onto himself over such an incendiary comment posted on Trump's Twitter account.
“The attempt by John Dowd to take the fall here is really ludicrous. First of all, when has anyone ever put words in Donald Trump’s mouth? And second, no matter who drafted it, it’s Donald Trump’s words,” Blumenthal said Monday on MSNBC's Morning Joe. “And if John Dowd truly wants to take responsibility, he has to resign from the president’s legal team,” the Connecticut Democrat added.
On Saturday, the day after Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the president tweeted, "I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"
The tweet was heavily scrutinized, with many people viewing it as an admission that Trump was aware Flynn had lied to federal agents when he fired him. If true, that means Trump also knew about those lies when he reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey to drop the Flynn investigation.
Trump's personal lawyer, Dowd, told Axios on Sunday that he had drafted the tweet, saying, "my bad."
"I'm out of the tweeting business. I did not mean to break news," he told the site.
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