Republican Sen. Mike Lee defends the President’s tweet saying he did not fire FBI Director James Comey over Russia, despite Trump saying otherwise last year: “He might have had a lot of things on his mind” when he ousted Comey pic.twitter.com/kOJMtDSxmo — New Day (@NewDay) May 31, 2018

Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) stepped up to the plate today and defended President Trump‘s demonstrably-false claim that firing FBI director James Comey had nothing to do with the investigations into Russia.

Trump said he “never fired James Comey because of Russia!” on Twitter today, even though that directly contradicts what he told Lester Holt on NBC News last year. Lee was asked about this today when he spoke to CNN’s John Berman, and the two ended up locking horns while discussing how big of a factor the Russia probe was for Comey’s firing.

“The fact that he might have had a lot of things on his mind including the fact that he believed that the Russia thing was made up still doesn’t negate the fact that he had adequate reason to fire him and he had adequate authority to fire him,” Lee said.

Berman countered by noting that Russia was an undeniable factor in Trump’s decision, based on his own words and the memo from Rod Rosenstein saying Russia was part of the justification to fire Comey.

Watch above, via CNN.

[Image via screengrab]

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