White House denies Comey was taped at dinner with Trump
President appears to threaten EX-FBI chief with records of conversations over ‘pledge of loyalty’
DONALD TRUMP, the US president, escalated his feud with James Comey yesterday after apparently suggesting that their private conversations were recorded and warning the former FBI chief against leaking information.
“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Mr Trump wrote on Twitter.
The message followed reports that Mr Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty from Mr Comey during a private dinner after the inauguration in January.
Unnamed associates of Mr Comey told The New York Times that the FBI director turned down Mr Trump’s demand, instead offering the president his honesty.
Sean Spicer, Mr Trump’s spokesman, repeatedly refused to say last night whether or not conversations in the White House, including in the Oval Office, were being recorded. Mr Spicer denied Mr Trump had threatened Mr Comey by suggesting there were tapes.
It was reported Mr Comey was “not worried about any tapes” Mr Trump may have of their conversation.
Mr Comey has declined an invitation to testify before the Senate intelligence committee next week.
Mr Trump is said to be “fixated” by news coverage of his decision to fire Mr Comey while the FBI was conducting an investigation into alleged collusion between Moscow and his presidential campaign. Yesterday he defended the struggle by his administration to come up with a consistent timeline and threatened to cancel press briefings.
Mr Trump tweeted: “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 added: “Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”
Mr Trump later reiterated the threat to drop the daily briefing because of the “incredible level of hostility” from the media. In an interview with Fox News host Judge Jeanine, Mr Trump said it was true he was “moving too fast” for his communications team to keep up.
He also said it would not have been a “bad question” to have asked Mr Comey if he was loyal. But Mr Trump said: “I didn’t ask that question.”
Last night, Congressman Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called for the president to hand over any recordings of his conversations with Mr Comey “or admit, once again, to have made a deliberately misleading, and in this case threatening, statement.”
Mr Trump cited comments from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, at a senate hearing earlier this week that he was not aware of any evidence demonstrating collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
Press aides have repeatedly insisted Mr Trump decided to dismiss Mr Comey on the advice of Rod Rosenstein, the US deputy attorney general.
This was contradicted by Mr Trump when he told NBC News he had planned to fire Mr Comey regardless of Mr Rosenstein’s recommendation.
Mr Trump also connected the decision to the FBI’S Russia investigation.
“[I]n fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump sought to play down his Russia connections in the interview. A letter released yesterday from the president’s lawyers publicly set out the Russian transactions reported on Mr Trump’s tax returns for the first time.
The letter, dated March 8, said that a review of the past 10 years of tax returns did not reflect “any income of any type from Russian sources”.
But the letter noted “exceptions”, citing income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95million (£74million).
The unnamed Russian billionaire is believed to be Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose financial empire springs from his companies’ production of potash, used for fertiliser. His purchase of the home has been previously reported.
‘Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future “press briefings” and hand out written responses’