Comey: Trump team spread ‘lies, plain and simple’
I DIDN’T TRUST TRUMP, SAYS EX-FBI DIRECTOR COMEY ON DAY OF STUNNING TESTIMONY
Former FBI director James Comey said in dramatic testimony Thursday he could not trust President Donald Trump to tell the truth, leading him to take extraordinary steps to document their private conversations and to make public the details to spur the appointment of a special counsel to probe the administration over possible links to Russia.
He also accused White House officials of telling “lies, plain and simple,” about him and the FBI to cover up the real reason for his dismissal last month.
“There’s no doubt that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,’’ Comey said in highly anticipated testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The endeavour to change the way the Russia investigation was conducted, that is a big deal.”
He also revealed that he was so skeptical about whether Justice Department leadership could handle the politically explosive probe after he was fired, he arranged for details of his private conversations with the president to be made public, so that an outside lawyer would take over the case.
Over nearly three hours of testimony, Comey recounted the events that he said showed the president sought to redirect the Russia probe away from his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey declined to say if he thought the president had obstructed justice, saying that was a determination to be made by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But his detailed account of private talks in which Trump repeatedly brought up the Russia matter, and asked him to issue public statements about it or drop the probe into Flynn, left no doubt in Comey’s mind why he was canned.
“I know I was fired because something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was putting pressure on [Trump],” Comey said.
In response to Comey’s testimony, Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, sent out a statement saying the president “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone.”
Kasowitz also accused Comey of trying to “undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications.”
A former federal prosecutor, Comey testified that he took detailed notes of his private talks with the president — a departure from his practice with Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama. Comey said he did so because he was “honestly concerned’’ that the president might lie about what had been said in their meeting. He said the two spoke in private a total of nine times before Comey was fired, he said.
Comey began his testimony by saying he became “confused and increasingly concerned’’ about the public explanations by White House officials for his firing on May 9, particularly after the president said he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he decided to fire him.
He wasted little time repudiating White House statements that he was fired in part because of low morale among FBI employees.
“The administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led,” Comey said. “Those were lies, plain and simple. And I’m so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them, and I’m so sorry the American people were told them.”
In his written testimony released Wednesday, Comey described being summoned to a dinner at the White House in January with the president, who told him: “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.”
Comey said he “didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.”
Comey said the conversation, in which Trump raised the question of whether Comey intended to stay as FBI director, despite their three prior discussions about him doing so, raised concerns in his mind.
“My common sense told me what’s going on here is he’s looking to get something in exchange for granting my request to stay in the job,” Comey testified.
Comey described his state of mind as he tried to navigate a series of tense conversations with the president about the investigation into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian operatives.
Comey made clear he felt the discussions were problematic and improper, in that Trump repeatedly pressed him about specific investigations that involved people close to the president.
On Feb. 13, Flynn was forced to resign for misleading Vice President Pence about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak. At the end of 2016, the FBI investigation into Flynn wasn’t going anywhere, but then on Dec. 29, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on Russia and Flynn had a phone call with Kislyak about those sanctions, according to U.S. officials briefed on the probe.
At the time Flynn was fired, he was being investigated for possibly lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, Comey said.
The day after Flynn’s ouster, a number of senior officials met the president in the Oval Office to discuss terrorism. At the end of the meeting, according to Comey, Trump asked everyone to leave but Comey.
Once alone, the president told Comey he hoped he could let go of the investigation into Flynn, who had been forced out as national security adviser a day earlier.
“When it comes from the president, I took it as a direction,” Comey said. He said he was shocked and concerned about the president’s request, but decided not to tell Sessions about it because he expected the attorney general would soon recuse himself from the Russia probe, which he eventually did.
After the meeting with Trump, Comey said he asked Sessions to prevent him from being left alone again in a room with the president. “His body language gave me the sense of, ‘What am I going to do?’” Comey said.
Comey acknowledged, as the president has claimed, that he repeatedly told Trump that he was not personally under investigation. But he also said that in private meetings and phone calls, the president repeatedly asked him to say publicly that he was not under investigation — something Comey did not want to do.