President Donald Trump’s lawyer John Dowd admitted on Sunday that Trump has known for months that former national security adviser Michael Flynn lied to the FBI, but claimed the president can’t obstruct justice because he’s “above the law.”

Trump knew about Flynn’s erroneous reporting of his conversations with the Russians as early as January, months before he fired then-FBI Director James Comey, Dowd told the Washington Post this weekend.

Trump raised questions about the timeline on Saturday, when he tweeted, “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies.” Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI the day before.

The implication that Trump had known his former national security adviser had lied to the FBI set off alarm bells. The White House had previously said Flynn was fired over false statements he provided to Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump and Comey met a few weeks after the president found out about Flynn, according to the Post. It was during that meeting that Comey has said that the president asked him to drop the investigation into Flynn, which constitutes a clear case of obstruction of justice.

But Dowd has shot down any speculation that his client obstructed justice, saying Trump is president and therefore “above the law.”

The “President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under the Constitution and has every right to express his view of any case,” Dowd told Axios in an interview published Monday.

The impeachment charges for both Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton involved obstruction of justice. However, Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, and the Senate vote on Clinton’s impeachment resulted in a 50-50 tie. ShareTweet