Sarah Huckabee Sanders 'Lies': Scrutiny Of Trump Press Secretary Continues To Grow After Mueller Report

While questioning a White House press secretary's trustworthiness is nothing new, the Trump administration has already had two who have filled the position and faced heavy doses of criticism. While Sean Spicer took his share of lumps, current White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders appears to have him beat.

Sanders, 36, has long been the subject of critical observation about her questionable comments to the press since succeeding Spicer in July 2017. But the scrutiny over Sanders making false or inaccurate statements has quickly mounted since the release this month of special counsel Robert Mueller's redacted report about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

According to the Mueller Report, Sanders provided false information about when Trump decided to fire then-FBI Director James Comey, about then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s involvement in Comey's firing and about the "countless" FBI agents who she said lost faith in Comey.

The Mueller Report said Sanders "acknowledged to investigators that her comments were not founded on anything."

Sanders had been reading from a prepared statement about the "countless" members of the FBI losing faith in Comey, yet claimed in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News that it was a "slip of the tongue."

She then doubled-down on the statement, adding that her overall comment was "not untrue."

"Look, I acknowledged that I had a slip of the tongue when I used the word 'countless,' but it's not untrue. And certainly, you just echoed the sentiment and the point I was making, is that a number of both current and former FBI agents agreed with the President," Sanders said.

"James Comey was a disgraced leaker who tried to politicize and undermine the agency he was supposed to run. Firing James Comey remains one of the best decisions that the President made," she said.

Sanders also defended herself on "CBS This Morning" while continuing an assault against Comey when she said, "the big takeaway here is that the sentiment is 100 percent accurate. The FBI is a better place without James Comey. He disgraced himself, and he undermined the agency that he was supposed to be in charge of."

Comey has maintained that the memos detailing his conversations with Trump, which were released to Columbia University Law School professor Daniel Richman, did not constitute leaks because they were unclassified.

When Sanders appeared on "Good Morning America" she got into a heated exchange with ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos about the "countless" comment. "That's not a 'slip of the tongue,' Sarah. That's a deliberate false statement," Stephanopoulos said.

MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell pointed out that "when she was forced under oath to admit that statement wasn't true, she actually lied about her lie to people who knew she was lying about her lie."

Prior to the Mueller Report, many had called into question Sanders' credibility but the voices have gotten louder in recent days.

Appearing Friday on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," former veteran ABC News reporter Sam Donaldson vilified Sanders after referencing how he had worked with nearly every press secretary dating back to the John F. Kennedy administration.

Donaldson noted that with the exception of Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon's press secretary, he had "never seen anything like ... Sarah Sanders." He also pointed out that Ziegler mostly told the truth, aside from the Watergate cover-up.

"Sanders simply lies about everything — taking a cue from her boss," Donaldson said. "Not just one thing. I think she’s had a lifetime-achievement Oscar for lying."

Daniel Dale, a Capitol Hill reporter for the Toronto Star, didn't seem surprised that the Mueller Report uncovered Sanders' inaccurate comments.

"She's been a liar and deceiver from the start. It's not like Mueller gave us some startling revelation," Dale posted on Twitter on April 20.

At the 2018 White House Correspondents Dinner, comedian Michelle Wolf viciously targeted Sanders.

"Every time Sarah steps up to the podium I get excited, because I’m not really sure what we’re going to get — you know, a press briefing, a bunch of lies or divided into softball teams. 'It’s shirts and skins, and this time don’t be such a little b****, Jim Acosta!,'" joked Wolf.

"I actually really like Sarah. I think she’s very resourceful. She burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smoky eye. Like maybe she’s born with it? Maybe it’s lies? It’s probably lies," Wolf added.

It's not just White House reporters and comedians who have slammed Sanders. Fact-checking website PolitiFact has noted five instances of Sanders making false statements from March 2017 to August 2018.

Many might argue that even when Sanders has corrected herself, she made sure to offer some White House spin like with the Comey comments. Sanders in August took to Twitter to admit she was wrong when she claimed President Trump had done more for African-American employment in his first year-and-a-half in the White House than former President Barack Obama did over eight years.

"Correction from today's briefing: Jobs numbers for Pres Trump and Pres Obama were correct, but the time frame for Pres Obama wasn't," she said.

"I'm sorry for the mistake, but no apologies for the 700,000 jobs for African Americans created under President Trump."

Meanwhile, Sanders has also faced ethics pressure. She used her White House Press Secretary Twitter account in June 2018 to name a restaurant that refused to serve her, which seemingly violates the Hatch Act for "discouraging patronage" and using her office for public gain. She may have also violated the Hatch Act in October 2018 when she used the Twitter account to post a picture with rapper Kanye West, who was wearing a "Make America Great Again" cap in the White House.