WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's tweets over the weekend defending himself against the ongoing investigation into possible collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia have further complicated the issue and U.S. lawmakers have warned the president may have obstructed justice.
Trump tweeted before dawn on Sunday that he never asked former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president's then national security adviser who on Friday pleaded guilty of lying to the FBI and pledged cooperation with the bureau, blowing a dramatic turn to the investigation.
Trump's account, however, contradicted the testimony made by Comey -- who was fired by Trump in May -- to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June in which he said Trump asked him to drop the probe into Flynn's alleged contact with former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last December, weeks before Trump assumed presidency.
The Sunday tweet followed an even more contradictory one sent on Saturday in which the outspoken president wrote: "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!"
Flynn, a retired lieutenant general of the U.S. Army and one of Trump's most trusted aides during the campaign and transition, was forced out of the White House in February, only acknowledging that he didn't tell Vice President Mike Pence in full about the nature of his conversations with Kislyak.
It later came to light that one of the topics discussed in the Flynn-Kislyak phone call was the sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration. Neither Trump nor Pence expressed concern at the time that the FBI was also misled, according to the Associated Press.
The AP said Sunday that Trump's tweet indicated he knew at the time that Flynn had done something that was against the law. Lawmakers are thus more suspicious that Trump, by demanding that Comey drop the Flynn case after knowing the latter had lied to the FBI, engaged in obstruction of justice.
"The president knew he (Flynn) had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him to effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime," Adam Schiff, senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was quoted by the Reuters as saying when appearing in the ABC program "This Week".
"Then you get the case of obstruction of justice," Schiff added.
Meanwhile, Diane Feinstein, a Democratic senate and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that she believed the latest development of the investigation and Trump's "continual tweets" pointed toward an obstruction of justice case.
"I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That's obstruction of justice," said the Democrat. Comey refused to "let Flynn go" as he was asked by Trump, and got fired by the president.
In an effort to extinguish the fire fanned up by Trump's seemingly self-destroying tweets, John Dowd, the president's personal lawyer, told the Reuters on Sunday that he drafted the Saturday tweet and "made a mistake."
"The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea," Dowd said, according to the Reuters. "Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand," he was quoted as saying.
When interviewed by other media outlets, the lawyer declined to answer questions about how and when Trump learned of Flynn's alleged lies to the FBI, but the Reuters quoted him as saying the first time the president knew it for a fact was when Flynn was charged.
The White House has been trying to portray Flynn's contact with Kislyak as an independent move after which he lied to his colleagues, but the New York Times reported Saturday that Flynn was in close contact with other senior members of Trump's transition team both before and after his conversations with Kislyak
An email written by a transition adviser of Trump's that was revealed on Saturday indicated that a number of the president's aides had been informed that Flynn was going to discuss Russian sanctions with Kislyak before he made the December phone call.
The Times, which obtained the full content of the Dec. 29 email written by K.T. McFarland, said McFarland described the sanctions imposed against Russia by the Obama administration as an attempt to delegitimize Trump's election victory.
The paper further quoted McFarland, who was Flynn's deputy during his less-than-one-month tenure as National Security Advisor, as saying in the email that the sanctions, in retaliation to Russia's alleged meddling in the election, could also make it much harder for Trump to ease tensions with Russia, "which has just thrown the U.S.A. election to him."
The report said it was unclear whether McFarland really believed Russia swayed the election in Trump's favor, citing a White House lawyer as saying she only meant the Democrats were portraying it that way.
Trump habitually takes to Twitter in his own defense, whether it be explaining his policy decisions or fending off criticisms against himself. However, frequently expressing views on an ongoing criminal investigation is largely seen as inappropriate for a president.
"You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said, "I'd be careful if I were you, Mr. President."
Trump's lawyers were also said to have begged him not to tweet about Russia or the investigation, but the president insisted on responding to the Flynn case, only to see his effort overshadow an otherwise triumphant week for him as the Senate passed a significant tax overhaul.
