Trump requested Comey to stop investigating Flynn
FBI chief’s memos clearest evidence that US President tried to influence probe
President Donald Trump had asked FBI director James Comey to end the probe into his first National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s Russian connections, according to notes Comey kept of the conversation that may have plunged the White Houses into one more crisis, possibly its worst yet.
If Comey’s notes are true, Trump’s remarks could be construed as obstruction of justice, among the top reasons that cost President Richard Nixon his job in 1974 and led to impeachment proceedings by the House of Representatives against President Bill Clinton in 1998, experts said. Clinton was saved by the senate.
While Republicans are still standing with their president, cracks are showing in their protective wall. House oversight committee chair Jason Chaffetz, a Trump supporter, sought all communications between Trump and Comey saying, “that seems like an extraordinary use of influence to try to shut down an investigation being done by the FBI”.
“I hope you can let this go,” Trump had told Comey, according to the latter’s notes, in the Oval Office on February 14, the day after Flynn was fired for lying to vice-president Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian envoy to the US Sergey Kislyak.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” ran the fuller conversation recorded by Comey, who kept written accounts of all his meetings with Trump, said The New York Times, which first reported the development.
Comey was in the Oval Office for a meeting with Trump, Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. After they were done, the president sent the other two men out and held back Comey and brought up the Flynn affair.
“He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,” the president had said and went on to tell Comey that Flynn had done nothing wrong. Comey replied, “I agree he is a good guy.”
This was the first and clearest evidence yet the president tried to influence the FBI’s investigation of his NSA, for his Russia connections.
And it hit the White House just as it was struggling to cope with a crisis triggered by Trump sharing classified intelligence, provided by the Israelis, with Russians. Trump’s disclosure might have imperiled the life of the spy whose alert led to the laptop ban on certain flights by the US and UK.
Russian president Vladimir Putin waded into that controversy by offering to release a recording of the controversial exchange between foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Trump.
Putin mocked the idea that Trump had shared secrets during the meeting, calling the allegations “political schizophrenia” and saying people spreading them are either “dumb” or “corrupt.”