On Friday, former national security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” to the FBI, an important step in something that probably won’t happen so let’s not get our hopes up, and after that the world waited to see how Donald Trump—the guy who hired Flynn—would respond. One of his lawyers released a stupid statement written in a stupid font, but Trump himself posted a tweet implying that he knew Flynn had lied to the FBI and that he hadn’t done anything about it, meaning Trump was either lying or confessing to obstruction of justice.
Now, ABC News is reporting that John Dowd, one of Trump’s personal lawyers, has claimed that he wrote the apparent confession, saying he had done so in a “sloppy” manner. A separate source “familiar with the matter” corroborated Dowd’s story, but ABC News lays out a few reasons why this whole thing seems pretty shady. For starters, why would Trump have told the FBI to go easy on Flynn—as James Comey said in his own testimony—if he knew that Flynn had lied? Also, if Trump’s tweets are supposed to be recognized as official statements from the White House, why does Trump’s personal lawyer have access to the account? Then there’s the fact that a presumably well-paid lawyer should’ve known how the tweet would’ve come across.
ABC News points out that “sources” suggest it’s “unlikely” that Dowd could’ve posted that tweet without Trump’s “knowledge or involvement,” and one other source says that Trump didn’t actually know that Flynn had lied. That means there are few different options here: Trump lied in the tweet, Trump’s lawyer posted a stupid tweet that makes his client look like a possible criminal, or Trump admitted to obstruction of justice. Of course, it’s worth pointing out again that nothing will probably come of this because the whole government is a joke and everybody’s only out for themselves, but at least we can all rest comfortably with the knowledge that something stupid is definitely going on.