Did Sean Spicer Lie? 'I Don't Think So,' He Says

NEW YORK. NY — After spending the first months of 2017 as President Trump's pitbull — ferociously defending his boss' policies and tweets while frequently lambasting media outlets and reporters — former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is getting used to life back in the private sector. He surprised audiences with a cameo at the Emmys, mocking his famous touting of the size of Trump's inauguration crowd, in a move that was criticized by many in the press.

But as Spicer makes the rounds, out of public service yet still in the public eye, he's willing to admit he made mistakes but not to offer a big apology.

"I made mistakes," Spicer said in an interview with ABC News Thursday. "There's no question. I think we all do." (For more information on this and other political stories, subscribe to the White House Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

But did he ever lie to the American people from the podium? "I don't think so." He said. "I have not knowingly done anything to ... do that, no."

Many interpreted his participation in the Emmys as an implicit admission that he had lied. On stage, he declared that the crowd at the Emmys would be the largest audience to ever attend the awards show — "Period!" — echoing the words he used to boast about the size of Trump's inauguration crowd on his first full day in the White House.

Since aerial footage of the crowd showed that many more people attended President Obama's first inauguration, many observers in the media criticized both Spicer and Trump for denying reality.

"Is it supposed to be comical that the former White House spokesman is now tacitly admitting that he lied to the American people?" tweeted Kaitlan Collins, a CNN reporter, when Spicer made his Emmys appearance. "Because, as someone who covers this White House and expects those who work in it to be truthful, I don’t find it humorous."

In the ABC interview, Spicer expressed some regrets about how he handled the inauguration crowd situation.

"I think it might've been better to be a lot more specific with what we were talking about in terms of the universe, not focus so much on photographic evidence," he said. On Monday, he told The New York Times he regretted his remarks about the inauguration crowd.

Aside from the inauguration debacle, there were many other instances in which Spicer flatly delivered falsehoods from the White House press room:

• For example, he claimed that Paul Manafort played a "very limited role" in Trump's campaign, even though Manafort was Trump's campaign chairman for several months in the crucial summer before the election.
• He referred to a study claiming it showed that 14 percent of voters were non-citizens, despite the fact that no study has made that assertion.
• Spicer claimed that Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer was only about adoption policy, despite the fact that the president's son had already revealed that it originally concerned gathering dirt on Hillary Clinton

However, without knowing what Spicer knew or thought at the time he made those statements, observers may never know for certain whether they were actually "lies" or just misstatements.

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