Pence weighs in on Flynn firing, says White House is "fully cooperating" with special counsel
See more of Margaret Brennan's interview with Vice President Pence on "CBS Evening News," "CBS This Morning" and CBSN.
In an exclusive interview with CBS News' Margaret Brennan, Vice President Mike Pence suggested he supports the special counsel's investigation and said that the Trump administration is "fully cooperating" with the special counsel's inquiry into meddling in the U.S. presidential election.
"My view of all these matters is that the special counsel has a job to do," Pence told Brennan Thursday. "We're fully cooperating with that inquiry, but for the president and myself and our entire administration, we're focused on what the American people hired us to do."
That was his response to her question about how he would explain the significance of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea about lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian envoy Sergey Kislyak and President Trump's assertion that he fired Flynn for lying to both Pence and to the FBI.
"When he was fired, did you know he had lied to the FBI?" Brennan asked Pence.
"What I can tell you is that I knew that he had lied to me -- and I know the president made the right decision with regard to him," the vice president replied.
Brennan interviewed Pence during an unannounced trip Thursday to Afghanistan to visit U.S. troops and to hold a key meeting in Kabul to urge Afghanistan's leaders to move forward with long delayed elections. The trip was cloaked in secrecy with reporters traveling with the vice president in a media blackout until the conclusion of his visit.
