Sarah Sanders defends herself against Mueller report "White House does not have a culture of lying"

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White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that a claim she once made about former FBI Director James Comey wasn't "founded on anything," but she's refusing to admit it was an intentional falsehood.

Mueller's report revealed Sanders admitted she baselessly told reporters that "countless members of the FBI" had complained about Comey, while Mueller said "the evidence does not support those claims." But Sanders explained herself by describing the remarks as a "slip of the tongue." On Friday, Sanders told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos grilled Sanders about the admission on Good Morning America.

But Sanders wouldn't even concede that her comments to Mueller were any kind of admission. Stephanopoulos pushed back on her assertion that the falsehood could simply be an accident. "That's not a slip of the tongue, Sarah, that's a deliberate false statement," he said. Sanders claimed her misstatement didn't actually misrepresent the situation.

"Actually, if you look at what I said," she argued, "I said the slip of the tongue was in using the word 'countless,' but there were a number of FBI, both former and current, that agreed with the president's decision [to fire Comey] and they've continued to speak out," she said.

Stephanopoulos pointed out that she had pushed the same talking point on multiple occasions, asking "Why can't you acknowledge that what you said then was not true?"