Comey to Congress: Trump told him ‘I need loyalty’
WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey will testify that President Donald Trump sought his “loyalty” and asked what could be done to “lift the cloud” of investigation shadowing his administration, according to prepared remarks released ahead of his appearance on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
Comey, who is scheduled to appear before the Senate intelligence committee, will also tell lawmakers that he informed Trump that he was not personally under investigation. Comey will say that the FBI and Justice Department were reluctant to state that publicly “because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.”
Comey’s testimony will be his first public comments since Trump abruptly fired him on May 9. At the time of his firing, Comey had been overseeing the federal investigation into possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s election meddling, outraging Democrats who claimed the president was interfering in an active probe.
The former director’s testimony is based on written memos of his interactions with Trump, some of which he says he shared with senior FBI leadership. Comey describes at length a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which he believed Trump asked him to drop any investigation of fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S.
“He then said, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,’ ” Comey says, according to the prepared remarks. “I replied only that ‘he is a good guy.’ ”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she was unsure if the president had reviewed Comey’s testimony. Asked whether the president stood by earlier assertions that he had neither sought Comey’s loyalty nor asked for the Flynn investigation to be dropped, she said: “I can’t imagine the president not standing by his own statement.”
Sanders referred specific questions to Trump’s outside counsel, Marc Kasowitz, who did not immediately respond to inquiries.
The seven-page remarks reveal in dramatic detail and with a writer’s flair Comey’s uneasiness with Trump, who appeared to disregard the FBI’s traditional independence from the White House. Some Republicans are expected to press Comey on why he did not raise his concerns publicly or resign.
Among the encounters Comey describes is a Jan. 27 dinner at the White House. He says that after Trump asked him if he wanted to remain as FBI director, the president declared: “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.”
Comey says he replied that he could offer his honesty, and that when Trump said he wanted “honest loyalty,” Comey paused and said, “You will get that from me.”
In March, after Comey had publicly revealed the existence of a federal counterintelligence investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump complained that the probe had left a “cloud” that was “impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country.”
“He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia,” Comey’s prepared statement says. “He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’ ”