White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told investigators it was a "slip of the tongue" when she falsely said in 2017 that countless members of the FBI had lost confidence in James Comey, according to special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
Sanders made the comments May 10, 2017, the day after President Donald Trump fired Comey as FBI chief. In a separate press interview, she made similar comments, later claiming they were made "in the heat of the moment" and weren't founded on anything, according to the report that was released Thursday.
The passages on Sanders's comments illustrate how the White House tried to justify the firing amid reports that Trump was trying to quash the investigation. Comey himself claimed that the president had tried to get him to pledge his loyalty and to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security adviser, over his ties to foreign countries.