A press briefing got spicy on Friday after a reporter called out White House Counsel spokesman Ian Sams for giving “factually inaccurate” information.
“You’re from the White House Counsel’s office, correct?” Gray Television’s White House correspondent, Jon Decker, asked Sams. “But you’re not a lawyer, correct?”
“I’m a spokesperson,” Sams confirmed.
“Any chance that we’ll get the White House counsel to come out here and answer questions directly?” Decker shot back.
(Video: YouTube)
Given that Sams was actively attempting to discredit Special Counsel Robert Hur’s explosive claims that President Biden is too mentally unfit to be held accountable for “willfully” retaining and disclosing classified materials — an assessment that could very well trigger the 25th Amendment and change the course of American history — it wasn’t a huge ask.
The spokesperson was dismissing Hur’s findings as “gratuitous” and “wrong.”
“Unfortunately, the gratuitous remarks that the former attorney general talked about have naturally caught headlines in all of your attention,” Sams informed reporters. “They’re wrong and they’re inaccurate.”
With so much on the line, having an actual lawyer on hand to provide more than a self-serving statement to the American people was the least the White House could have done.
But Sams and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre were miffed by the suggestion that this was above their PR pay grade.
“Should I be offended by that?” Sams asked. “What? I mean, come on.”
“I get offended all the time,” chimed Jean-Pierre.
Decker wasn’t moved.
“You did say something that was factually incorrect, Ian,” he noted.
Sams had twice previously claimed that Hur was “the first special counsel investigation ever that hasn’t indicted anyone.”
That, Sams deduced, was why Hur’s report included “gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms of the president.”
“We are in a very pressurized political environment and when you are the first special counsel in history not to indict anybody, there is pressure to criticize and to make, you know, statements that maybe otherwise you wouldn’t make,” Sams had asserted.
“There has been a previous special counsel–” Decker said before Jean-Pierre cut him off.
“Jon, finish your question, please,” she snapped.
“I was asked to come today by your colleagues in the press corps, and we happily obliged,” Sams said in his own defense.
Decker then pressed Sams to explain “to every voter out there, every American why it is that President Biden essentially is let off the hook and former President Donald Trump is now facing the slew of criminal charges which seem, to most people, very similar.”
“Great windup, Jon,” was Sams’s snarky reply. “I mean, really, a good windup.”
According to Sams, “the report itself goes through in great detail the facts and evidence that led to the obvious conclusion that there was no case here.”
After encouraging Decker to “read the report,” the correspondent replied, “I’ve read the report, and that’s the reason why I asked that question and the reason why so many people seem confused. Because you hear ‘willful retention of National Defense information’ related to Trump, ‘willful retention of classified material’ related to President Biden, and yet one individual is facing a criminal trial being brought by the Department of Justice in Fort Pierce, Florida, and the other one is not facing any charges whatsoever.”
Sams insisted that Hur only “explored the theory of willful retention, but that the evidence as a whole was insufficient because that’s not what the facts show.”
Then, Sams bolted.
“There was a previous special counsel probe that did not result in indictments, by the way,” Decker stated as Jean-Pierre took the podium. “The Hamilton Jordan case.”
For those unfamiliar, Jordan allegedly used cocaine while serving as White House chief of staff for former President Carter. Following an investigation, a special prosecutor declined to indict him.
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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