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White House press secretary Sean Spicer clarified President Donald Trump's comments Wednesday, saying he "meant that the total number of people released from Gitmo was 122." | AP Photo Lawyers dispute White House claims on Bush Guantanamo releases

The Trump White House's effort to defend an inaccurate presidential tweet about Guantánamo prisoners appears to have compounded the error.

On Monday, President Donald Trump tweeted: "122 vicious prisoners, released by the Obama Administration from Gitmo, have returned to the battlefield. Just another terrible decision!"

In fact, the vast majority of those men were released under President George W. Bush, with only eight or nine of those "confirmed" to be engaged in terrorist activities transferred out under President Barack Obama, according to recent intelligence reports.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer, in clarifying the tweet, said Trump "meant that the total number of people released from Gitmo was 122."

But Spicer seemed to stray from the facts when he then tried to defend Bush by saying he had no choice but to release many of the detainees.

"Just to be clear: There's a big difference: under the Bush administration, most of those were court-ordered," Spicer told reporters at the daily briefing.

"The Obama administration took great steps, they talked about — it was a campaign promise frankly from Day One to close Gitmo," Spicer added. "The reason the Bush administration did it was in many cases they were under court order. ... The Obama administration made it actually a priority to let people go and to actively desire to close that camp and to release more and more of those people especially in the waning days. There's a huge contrast between the posture and the policy of the last two administrations on how they were dealing with Gitmo."

Spicer's assertion that "most" or "many" of the Bush-era releases were court-ordered is simply false, according to lawyers involved in such cases and to Obama administration officials.

"That's loony. ...That's just flat-out not true," said Sabin Willett, a prominent lawyer for Guantánamo detainees. "You can count on one hand, and not even use all your fingers, the number of people a district court ordered released where that was not reversed on appeal."

In fact, no more than three of the 532 Guantánamo detainees transferred out under Bush were moved because they won a court challenge, legal experts said.

"The truth is that Sean Spicer doesn’t know what he is talking about and doesn’t care enough to take the time to find out," said former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig, who was deeply involved in Obama's early Guantánamo policy.

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"It's nonsense," added David Remes, another attorney who has represented numerous Guantánamo detainees. "There were cases where the rulings went against the government and the government chose not to appeal and let the guy go, but the D.C. Circuit held that the courts cannot force the president to release anybody."

Several lawyers noted that most of the Bush-era releases took place between 2004 and 2006, while the legal rights of Guantánamo detainees were still hotly disputed. The Supreme Court decision upholding habeas rights for Guantánamo prisoners was handed down in June 2008, just seven months before Bush left office.

In the months between that ruling and the end of Bush's term, judges ordered the release of 23 Guantnamo detainees. However, only three were actually transferred out before Bush left office, experts say.

In October 2008, a federal judge ordered the transfer of 17 Uighur prisoners from Guantánamo to his D.C. courtroom for potential release into the U.S. The ruling was stayed, the Uighurs were never brought to the U.S. and were not released until the Obama era.

Another judge granted relief to five more prisoners the next month, three of whom were released in December 2008.

An additional prisoner won his habeas case In January 2009, before Bush left office, but wasn't released until June of that year.

A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for clarification of Spicer's remarks.