A White House press secretary held a briefing for the first time in more than 13 months Friday, with newcomer Kayleigh McEnany dusting off the old mainstay for at least one day .

And while the briefing carried promises of no lies and featured a relatively steady performance, the old, factually challenged mainstays of past briefings — and President Trump’s own commentary — were readily present .

At the start, McEnany said there would be more briefings than there have been for the past year-plus. The press secretary she replaced, Stephanie Grisham, went her entire tenure without holding even one. McEnany was haunted by her predecessors in more ways than one, though, as one of the early questions was about whether she would lie to the news media.

I will never lie to you,” she said. “You have my word on that.”
What followed, though, didn’t exactly scream sudden truth or transparency from the White House press office.
For one, McEnany echoed Trump’s false claim about the Russia investigation, saying it had amounted to “the complete and total exoneration of President Trump.”
In fact, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report made a point to note that it couldn’t absolve Trump of obstruction of justice, regardless of the evidence. Attorney General William P. Barr took the ball from there and declined to accuse Trump of that, but it’s false to say that Trump was completely exonerated by the investigation .
In the service of making the above point, McEnany also alleged the Mueller investigation had cost $40 million — a claim Trump made in late 2018. In fact, the cost was $32 million, according to the Justice Department. Much of that was recouped, thanks to seizures related to the investigation, including from former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

At another point, McEnany sought to downplay comparisons between an allegation of sexual assault recently lodged against Joe Biden by a former aide, Tara Reade, and the many similar allegations that Trump has faced.
“Leave it to the media to really take an issue about the former vice president and turn it on the president and bring up accusations from four years ago that were asked and answered in the form of the vote of the American people,” McEnany said .
In fact, perhaps the most serious allegation leveled against Trump — one of rape — was brought just a few months ago by journalist E. Jean Carroll. And regardless, while Trump has pushed the idea that a successful election absolves him of fault in the face of such allegations, that it isn’t how the criminal justice system works.
McEnany also re-upped a claim she has made in recent days, saying that despite early questions about the capacity of the United States to provide enough ventilators amid the coronavirus outbreak, “not a single American has died for lack of a ventilator.”

Perhaps McEnany’s most provably false comments, though, came with regard to former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump and Flynn’s other backers have in recent days spotlighted newly revealed notes from the law enforcement officials whom Flynn lied to, arguing that they had set him up. (For reasons described here, that argument is problematic, at best.)

McEnany said there was “a handwritten FBI note that says, quote, we need to get Flynn to lie, quote, and get him fired.”

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