Corey Lewandowski offered a curious defense when he was confronted for his false attack on former FBI Director Jim Comey. On Monday the president’s former campaign manager and current Trump BFF told Fox News viewers that Jim Comey failed to protect attendees of the Boston Marathon for the 2013 terror bombing. Tuesday afternoon he was challenged to defend the claim on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”
Andres Mitchell challenged Lewandowski Tuesday afternoon, reminding him that Comey “was not FBI Director for another five months” after the Boston bombing. In fact, he was a private citizen at the time.
“That’s right,” Lewandowski responded. “As you know Jim Comey served as the head of the Boston office of the FBI, I believe, for a period of time, at the same time that Mr. Mueller, I believe, served as the U.S. Attorney, in the State of Massachusetts.”
(NCRM has not been able to confirm this, and it appears to be false. Mueller was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts between 1986 and 1987. Comey was never the head of the Boston office of the FBI. He was in private practice until 1987.)
“This goes back some 20 years,” he admitted. “But Jim Comey was responsible, I believe, for the Whitey Bulger fiasco, which took place in Boston. I believe that Jim Comey, at the time, was the head of the FBI in Boston when Whitey Bulger –”
(This also appears to be incorrect.)
“Whitey Bulger had nothing to do with the Boston bombing,” Mitchell interjected.
“But if we’re looking at Jim Comey as a man who has positioned himself as man who is above reproach, I think we have to start looking very directly at what he accomplished or didn’t accomplish as a FBI agent.”
Whitey Bulger is an 88-year old former mob boss who was sentenced in 2013 to two life terms plus five years for racketeering and involvement with 11 murders.