“President Trump on Friday accused James B. Comey, the fired F.B.I. director, of lying under oath to Congress, saying he would gladly provide sworn testimony disputing Mr. Comey’s charge that the president forced him out because of his handling of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia.
“Mr. Trump asserted that the comments on Thursday by Mr. Comey, whom he called ‘leaker,’ had proved that there was no collusion between his campaign and Moscow, nor any obstruction of justice by the president. He hinted again that he had tapes of his private talks with the former F.B.I. chief that would disprove Mr. Comey’s account, but declined to confirm the existence of any recordings.
“ ‘Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,’ Mr. Trump said in the White House Rose Garden, during a news conference with the visiting Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.”
In the opinion of Robert Reich:
Say a person lies repeatedly. He tells whopper after whopper, repeating them even after they’re shown to be complete fabrications. He insists that “3 to 5 million” fraudulent votes were cast against him in the presidential election, without a shred of evidence ever turning up. He says his predecessor wiretapped him, again without any evidence. He has claimed he heard Arabs cheer when the World Trade Center went down, that Barack Obama wasn’t born in America, that vaccinations cause autism, that climate change is a hoax.
He has made so many bogus claims that fact-checkers are numb, reporters aren't surprised by anything that comes out of his mouth, and late-night comedians are awash in material.
Now suppose there’s a factual dispute between this serial liar and someone else – say, a former director of the FBI. Whom would you trust to be telling the truth? Suppose the serial liar said he’d be “100 percent” willing to provide his version under oath. How much weight does that carry?
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis And Glenn Thrush
