Trump threatens Comey with hint of ‘tapes’
Suggestion that president may be taping meetings adds more drama to remarkable week
WASHINGTON— President Donald Trump on Friday warned James Comey, the former FBI director he fired this week, against leaking anything negative about him, saying that Comey “better hope” that there are no secret tapes of their conversations that the president could use in retaliation.
The suggestion that the president may be surreptitiously recording his meetings or telephone calls added a sensational new twist at the end of a week that roiled Washington.
Trump and his White House aides later refused to say whether the pres- ident tapes his visitors, something Trump was suspected of doing when he was in business in New York.
“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump appeared to be referring to a report in the New York Times that Comey had declined to pledge his loyalty during a dinner at the White House earlier this year, an account the president denied.
Asked directly about whether there were tapes of his conversations, Trump refused to say.
No president in the past 40 years has been known to regularly tape his phone calls or meetings because, among other reasons, they could be subpoenaed by investigators as they were during the Watergate investigation that ultimately forced president Richard Nixon to resign. Democrats expressed shock. “For a president who baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping him, that Mr. Trump would suggest that he, himself, may have engaged in such conduct is staggering,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a Democrat on the House intelligence committee. “The president should immediately provide any such recordings to Congress or admit, once again, to have made a deliberately misleading — and in this case threatening — statement.”
Reps. John Conyers of Michigan and Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrats on the judiciary and oversight committees, sent a letter to the White House on Friday demanding copies of any recordings if they exist. The letter noted that “it is a crime to intimidate or threaten any potential witness with the intent to influence, delay or prevent their official testimony.”
The matter arose in a series of early-morning Twitter messages in which Trump appeared agitated over news reports Friday that focused on contradictory accounts of his decision to fire Comey at the same time the FBI is investigating ties between Trump’s associates and Russia. Among other things, he threatened to cancel future White House briefings.
The threat may have been just a rhetorical point, and the daily briefing already scheduled for later in the day went forward with press secretary Sean Spicer, despite the Twitter post. Spicer declined to say whether the president had decided to stop holding daily news briefings.
The president also expressed pique at attention on the shifting versions of how he came to decide to fire Comey.
The original White House version of the firing was that the president acted on the recommendation of the attorney general and deputy attorney general because of Comey’s handling of last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email.
But in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump said he had already decided to fire Comey and would have done so regardless of any recommendation.
And he indicated that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he made the decision.
Implicitly acknowledging that misinformation had been given out, Trump said that no one should expect his White House to give completely accurate information.
“As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” he tweeted.