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After insisting Comey was a liar, Trump and the White House now say he told the truth

That’s a problem.

CREDIT: Fox News screengrab
CREDIT: Fox News screengrab

Over the past few weeks, the White House has gone from accusing former FBI director James Comey of lying during his sworn testimony before the Senate to saying that — thanks to President Trump’s efforts to manipulate him with a misleading tweet about “tapes” — Comey actually told the truth.

But that shift in rhetoric creates new problems for the Trump administration. If Comey was telling the truth, it’s bad news for Trump.

During a Rose Garden press conference on June 9, President Donald Trump said Comey lied when he testified that Trump asked him to quash an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and that Trump asked for a personal loyalty pledge. Trump added he was “100 percent” willing to repeat these accusations under oath.

It made sense that Trump and his lawyer would dispute aspects of Comey’s testimony that raised questions about whether the president’s actions amounted to obstruction of justice. But Trump’s offer to testify under oath was risky, as it could result in the president perjuring himself.

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Two interviews on Friday indicate that the White House’s line has now shifted. Trump and his surrogates are no longer accusing Comey of lying. Instead, they’re claiming that thanks to Trump’s tweet suggesting tapes of his conversations with Comey existed, the president Jedi mind-tricked the former FBI director into telling the truth during his testimony.

On Fox & Friends on Friday morning, Trump said that “when [Comey] found out that there may be tapes out there — whether it’s governmental tapes or anything else, and who knows — I think his story may have changed. You’ll have to take a look at that because then he has to tell what actually took place at the events. And my story didn’t change — my story was always a straight story, my story always was the truth.”

In response to Trump’s comments, interviewer Ainsley Earhardt praised him, saying that raising the specter of tapes “was a smart way to make sure [Comey] stayed honest during those hearings.”

“It wasn’t very stupid, I can tell you that,” Trump replied. “He did admit that what I said was right.”

Shortly after Fox & Friends went off the air, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer joined Fox News for a live interview. Spicer echoed Trump’s comments, saying the reference to “tapes” in Trump’s tweet simply reflected Trump’s desire for “the truth to come out.”

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“He wanted everyone to be honest about this, and he wanted to get to the bottom of it and I think he succeeded in doing that,” Spicer said. “The reality is, is that he wanted to make sure the truth came out, and by talking about something like tapes, made Comey in particular think to himself, ‘I better be honest, I better tell the truth about the circumstances regarding the situation.’”

Spicer went on to mention an aspect of Comey’s testimony that the Trump administration has been eager to amplify: the fact that Comey said Trump himself was not under investigation in the FBI’s Russia probe. Spicer noted that Comey “had been honest and told the president on three separate occasions that he wasn’t under investigation.”

It’s unclear whether Trump and his surrogates still think Comey lied about the loyalty pledge and Trump’s desire to quash the Flynn investigation. But if Trump’s tweet ensured that Comey told the truth about Trump not being under investigation, why wouldn’t it also have ensured that he told the truth about the loyalty pledge and Trump’s desire to end the Flynn probe?

Comey also indicated during his testimony that while Trump may not have been under investigation while he was still FBI director, the situation had changed since the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Last week, the Washington Post reported that Mueller is now “interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice.”