Until Trump released a statement over news that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had named former FBI director Robert Muller as a special prosecutor to take over an investigation, it was said that President Trump had not said much on his Twitter account over the last 24 hours. Specifically, to comments on reports that former FBI director James Comey kept a memo of their conversation in the Oval Office in February where the now-fired director said that the President told him to drop his investigation on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
White House in a panic after recent controversies
The investigation taken over by a special prosecutor is one over the Trump campaign and their potential connections to Russian officials. Blasting News reported on the memo and of the White House's denial of the events described in the memo. But more details revealed that during their meeting at the White House, Trump asked Vice President Mike Pence and Department of Justice Attorney General Jeff Sessions to leave the room before he made his request to James Comey.
On Monday, it was reported that White House press secretary Sean Spicer, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon were heard screaming at each other during a meeting in the cabinet room to the point where staffers had turned up the volume on televisions to drown out the noise.
Reporters present were hoping to get statements from the White House and were witnesses to the fact that aides were scrambling to make a statement.
NEW from @gregpmiller and @GregJaffe: Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian officials https://t.co/s2PYmJ0l67
— Post Politics (@postpolitics) May 15, 2017
It was reported that national security advisor H.R.
McMaster walked into where the press and was caught saying out loud that that was the last place he wanted to be and quickly left. The gaggle formed right after the Washington Post had reported that President Trump revealed classified information to two Russian officials who were at the White House last week.
White House gets serious
Sean Spicer said in an unsigned statement that the allegations made by Comey in his memo were false. This is similar to the criticism from President Trump when he said that Comey was a "showboat" and "grandstanding" during his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in early May, which he pointed to as when he began to decide to fire James Comey.
The press secretary told reporters on Air Force One on Wednesday that the President was eager to get to the bottom of the Comey memo and likely, the leaking of classified information to the Russians. President Trump appeared to repeat the same "concern" in his statement, saying that he wanted to" get to the bottom of this."
But Spicer was reportedly dodging questions from the press, some of them were with making comparisons of Nixon's Watergate Scandal.
As of this writing, it appears that the White House has cracked down on its "top surrogates" in order to prevent them from making conflicting statements.
Further confirmation of this came with one transition official who said that their silence was deliberate so that they don't extend the news cycle of the administration's controversies. At the same time, the President showed no signs of submitting to the pressure building up around daily controversies during his speech with the U.S. Coast Guard. In his speech, he said that no president has ever been as mistreated he had. The President's
The President's defiant statement seems to indicate, despite the silence from the White House, that he will continue fighting with the press and negative coverage of him perhaps even following through with his threat to cancel all press briefings at the White House. Here's a round up of the events leading up to now.
