White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Tuesday defended herself as an “honest person” whose “credibility is probably higher than the media’s” even as she again refused to discuss her misleading claim that President Trump did not dictate his eldest son’s statement about the Trump Tower meeting.
“I think you all know I’m an honest person who works extremely hard to provide you with accurate information at all times,” Sanders told reporters at her daily press briefing.
Sanders’s claim, which she made last August, was undercut by a letter to special counsel Robert Mueller from Trump’s outside lawyers who said the president did dictate the statement.
{mosads}The 2016 Trump Tower meeting, as well as the statement explaining it, is under scrutiny by Mueller, who is probing whether the president obstructed his investigation into Russia’s interference in the election.
Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump campaign officials met in New York with a Russian lawyer they’d been told could offer dirt on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, though they later said such damaging material was never discussed.
Tuesday marked the second consecutive day Sanders was peppered with questions about her comments, which have raised questions about her credibility.
Sanders shot back at reporters who asked why they should trust her claims.
“Frankly I think my credibility is probably higher than the media’s and I think in large part that’s because you guys spend more of your time focused on attacking the president than reporting the news,” she said.
The comments came a day after Trump’s outside lawyers stood by their claim that the president did indeed dictate the statement.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said no one had lied about the information, and that the original denial was “a mistake” on the White House’s part.
“I don’t think anybody’s lying,” Giuliani said on CNN. “I think a mistake was made.”
Sanders said she did not want to “get into a back-and-forth” about her initial comments about the Trump Tower meeting and again referred reporters to the president’s team of private attorneys.