I’ve just f ired the head of the FBI... he was a real nut job
What Trump told Russian minister
Donald Trump told top Kremlin officials that sacking FBI director James Comey had relieved ‘great pressure’ on him, it was claimed last night.
The US President reportedly said: ‘I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job.’
according to White House notes of the May 10 meeting leaked to the new York Times, Mr Trump added: ‘I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.’ He added: ‘I’m not under investigation.’
The President had been speaking to Russacked sian foreign minister Sergey lavrov and Moscow’s ambassador to Washington Sergey Kislyak in the oval office.
Mr Trump has already been criticised for telling his Russian visitors at the same meeting about classified information – provided by Israel – concerning an alleged Islamic State bomb plot.
The latest claims will reinforce accusations that Mr Trump Mr Comey over the FBI’s investigation into possible collusion between his election campaign and the Kremlin.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Mr Comey had put ‘unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia’ by ‘grandstanding and politicising the investigation’.
The White House initially claimed he was sacked because of his handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The latest twist emerged as it was claimed Mr Trump tried to woo the ousted lawman in an apparent bid to influence the Russia investigation. The FBI chief reportedly became increasingly alarmed at the President’s approaches, which were at odds with protocol designed to keep the agency impartial.
Just weeks after taking office, Mr Trump called Mr Comey and asked him when he was planning to tell the public that he wasn’t personally under investigation, according to the new York Times.
and the FBI director was said to be angry when the president tried to hug him in an overt display of friendship at January’s presidential inauguration.
Benjamin Wittes, a friend of the sacked agency boss, said: ‘Comey was disgusted. He regarded the episode as a physical attempt to show closeness and warmth in a fashion calculated to compromise him before Democrats who already mistrusted him.’
Mr Trump allegedly asked Mr Comey over dinner to pledge loyalty to him and later suggested he shut down a probe into disgraced national Security advisor Mike Flynn. When Mr Comey refused to comply, the president was ‘perceptibly uncomfortable’ and followed up by ‘trying to be chummy in a fashion that Comey felt was designed to absorb him into Trump’s world’ said Mr Wittes.
once the President realised the ‘Russia matter’ wasn’t going away, ‘he pulled the trigger,’ he added.