President Donald Trump‘s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski admitted lying in an MSNBC interview during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Lewandowski, who is currently considering a 2020 Senate bid, told Ari Melber of MSNBC on Feb. 22, “I don’t ever remember the president ever asking me to get involved with Jeff Sessions or the Department of Justice in any way, shape or form ever.”
Lewandowski earlier confirmed while under oath, that Trump did ask him to pressure former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to exclude his campaign from Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
After playing the clip of the interview, Democratic counsel Barry Berke said, “That wasn’t true, was it sir?”
He responded, “I have no obligation to be honest with the media because they are just as dishonest as anybody else.”
The Mueller report states that while Trump did ask Lewandowski to persuade Sessions to limit the scope of the investigation, Lewandowski never ended up discussing the matter with Sessions. He instead chose to take his children on a beach vacation, because “that was more of a priority.”
He testified that Mueller’s report was “an accurate representation” of his conversations with Trump, but insisted that “the president never asked me to do anything illegal.”
Lewandowski also admitted he never actually read Mueller’s report.
Though he was caught lying on MSNBC, he said he is a “truth-teller” when under oath.
After the conversation between Berke and Lewandowski unfolded, Melber said on NSBC that it was “really striking to see, under oath, someone to admit to their lying and then explain the reason is their disrespect as stated for the press.”
He continued, saying that “whatever one’s view of the press,” Lewandowski “would also seem to want to have an obligation to his own supporters, to the public, to the citizenry of this country, that he could tell the truth.”
Melber tweeted a clip of MSNBC’s Last Word showing the part of the testimony where Lewandowski admitted lying.
