The new White House press secretary vowed not to lie but to mislead Flynn

While McEnany swears not to lie, he appears to have misled reporters about the recently published handwritten notes from Bill Priestap, director of counter-past intelligence at the FBI, who wrote asking about how agents should conduct critical interviews with former national security adviser Michael Flynn

“If we make him admit to having violated the Logan Law, give the facts to the DOJ & ask them to decide. Or, if he initially lied, then we offer him [redacted] “He admitted it, documented it to the DOJ, and let them decide how to deal with it,” the note added.

In 2017, Trump tweeted that he had to fire Flynn because he “lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He had pleaded guilty to the lie.”

On Friday, the press secretary called the FBI’s action a “serious miscarriage of justice.”

On Thursday, Trump also piled up on the FBI, saying: “What they are trying to do to destroy it, and to hurt this presidency may be in the history of our country, nothing has ever been like that. An absolute shame.”

McEnany said that he planned to “continue” press briefings but stopped committing to holding them every day, saying that the time of the briefing would be announced at a later time.

“Regarding the briefing time, we plan to do it,” McEnany said.

Until McEnany’s appearance on Friday afternoon, there had been no press briefing led by the White House press secretary in 417 days – an unprecedented breakthrough in administrative habits in the modern era. It marked the longest stretch without such direction during the president’s administration since the briefing on television began.

In a span of more than a year, Trump largely fills space with informal exchanges with journalists, preferring to answer questions outside the White House before going up to Marine One.

But because his travels had diminished during the pandemic, Trump turned to the official briefing that was often in the White House briefing room along with members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

But nearly daily appearances with advisers have slowed, especially this week, with Trump choosing to answer questions from reporters in other parts of the White House.