Growing calls for Comey to speak publicly
Trump complains that ‘no politician in history’ has been treated worse
WASHINGTON— A besieged U.S. President Donald Trump complained Wednesday that “no politician in history” has been treated worse by his foes, even as exasperated fellow Republicans slowly joined the clamour for a deeper investigation into whether he tried to quash an FBI probe into a top aide’s ties to Russia.
Three congressional committees, all led by Republicans, confirmed they want to hear from fired FBI director James Comey, whose notes about a February meeting with the president indicate Trump urged him to drop the bureau’s investigation of fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Congressional investigators are seeking Comey’s memos, as well as documents from the Justice Department related to the firing.
The latest political storm, coupled with the still-potent fallout from Trump’s recent disclosure of classified information to Russian diplomats, overshadowed all else in the capital and beyond. Stocks fell sharply on Wall Street as investors worried that the latest turmoil in Washington could hinder Trump’s pro-business agenda.
Democrats called ever more loudly for a more aggressive investigation into what they described as possible obstruction of justice. Republicans, frustrated the president’s relentless parade of problems, largely sought to cool the heated climate with assur- ances they would get to the bottom of scandals.
“There’s clearly a lot of politics being played,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said. “Our job is to get the facts and to be sober about doing that.”
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell said it would be “appropriate and timely for the Senate to hear directly” from Comey in a setting open to the public.
Unimpressed, Rep. Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on a key House oversight panel, said, “Speaker Ryan has shown he has zero, zero, zero appetite for any investigation of Donald Trump.”
Interest is hardly limited to the U.S. in the continuing, and occasionally surreal, scandals hitting the new president who has yet to hit his fourmonth mark in office.
No less a commentator than Russia’s Vladimir Putin called the dramatic charges swirling around Trump evidence of “political schizophrenia spreading in the U.S.” He offered to furnish a “record” of the Trump-diplomats meeting in the Oval Office if the White House desired it.
There was no word on what that record might entail, a question many were likely to raise in light of Trump’s recent warning to Comey that he had “better hope” there were no tapes of a discussion they’d had. The White House disputed Comey’s account of the February conversation concerning Flynn, but did not offer specifics. Several members of Congress said that if Trump did suggest that Comey “let this go” regarding Flynn’s Russian contacts, it was probably just a joke, light banter.
Trump did not offer any commentary on Twitter and did not directly address the controversies during a commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy, though he delivered a broadside against the forces he sees as working against him.
“No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly,” he said.