Better hope there are no tapes, Trump warns Comey
PRESIDENT Donald Trump said James Comey had better hope there are no “tapes” of their conversations, in an apparent warning to his fired FBI director.
His tweet came the morning after he asserted Mr Comey had told him three times that he was not under FBI investigation.
“I said, ‘if it’s possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation?’ He said, ‘you are not under investigation’,” Mr Trump said in an interview with NBC News.
He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Mr Comey was asking to keep his job.
Mr Comey has not confirmed Mr Trump’s account.
Late on Thursday, The New York Times cited two unnamed Comey associates who recounted his version of a January dinner with the President in which Mr Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty.
Mr Comey declined, instead offering “honest”.
When Mr Trump then pressed for “honest loyalty”, Mr Comey told him “you will have that”, the associates said.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed the report and said the President would “never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty”.
Officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether Mr Trump recorded his discussions with the former FBI director.
The President’s morning Twitter comments again raised the spectre of Richard Nixon, who secretly taped conversations and telephone calls in the White House during the Watergate investigation that ultimately led to his downfall.
Mr Trump’s firing of Mr Comey has already left him with the dubious distinction of being the first President since Mr Nixon to fire a law enforcement official overseeing an investigation tied to the White House.
He wrote: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
He also questioned whether his administration should cancel all future press briefings and, instead, replace them with written responses.
The President 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 also reiterated his view that reports about collusion with the Russian government by members of his 2016 campaign are “fabricated”.