WASHINGTON (AP) – As FBI Director James Comey was in the hot seat, being grilled on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, the White House was busy trolling him on Twitter.
The official White House account was used to tap out a series of tweets Monday trying to shift the focus to problematic leaks instead of what they’d revealed. But several times the tweets from the White House account appeared to go too far, misrepresenting Comey’s testimony in obvious ways.
The episode resulted in a real-time fact-checking of President Donald Trump by the FBI director – an unprecedented moment that put a sharp focus on a pattern of misstatements and mischaracterizations by the White House.
In one of the tweets, the White House incorrectly claimed that Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers had told lawmakers “that Russia did not influence electoral process.”
But the video the White House tweet included shows that wasn’t the case.