Trump: Firing long in works
He says told by Comey he was in clear
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he had planned to fire FBI Director James Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the decision. His assertions came as Comey’s temporary replacement joined in, contradicting other administration statements on the firing.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump also said he’d asked Comey pointblank if he was under investigation, a question reflecting no concern about the prospect of interfering in an active FBI probe. He said Comey told him three times — at a dinner and in two phone calls — that he was not, as the bureau investigated his presidential
campaign’s possible ties to Russia’s election meddling.
“I said, ‘If it’s possible, would you let me know am I under investigation?’ He said, ‘You are not under investigation,’” Trump told NBC.
Trump later asserted that “there’s no collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians.” He added that “the Russians did not affect the vote. And everybody seems to think that.”
“If Russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, I think it’s a horrible thing and I want to get to the bottom of it and I want to make sure it will never ever happen,” he said.
The relationship of Trump and Comey was strained early on, in part because of the president’s unsubstantiated claims that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Comey found the allegations confounding, according to his associate, and wondered what to make of what he described as strange thoughts coming from his new boss.
The president on Thursday said Comey had left the FBI in “virtual turmoil.” He said that while he received a scathing assessment of Comey’s performance from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Monday, that memo was not a catalyst for his dramatic decision, as the White House had said earlier.
“I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said. “Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.”
That’s different from the White House’s initial account in the hours after Comey’s firing. Multiple officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, said the president was acting at the behest of Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
It quickly became clear that the president had been stewing for days over the Russia investigation and Comey’s refusal to defend him in appearances before lawmakers. By Wednesday afternoon, the officials, like Trump on Thursday, were saying he had in fact been considering ousting the FBI director for months because of a lack of confidence in his ability to lead the agency.
The multiple accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a “showboat” and “grandstander” in the NBC interview, added to a sense of uncertainty in the West Wing as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president.
SHIFTING EXPLANATIONS
The White House’s explanations continued to shift throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White House’s assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBI’s rank and file.
“That is not accurate,” McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.”
White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, however, insisted she had heard from “countless” members of the FBI who welcomed the president’s decision.
Sanders attributed the disconnect in explanations to the
fact that she had not directly asked Trump when he’d made the decision to fire Comey until shortly before Thursday’s news briefing.
McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trump’s version of his conversations with Comey.
Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., chairman of the Intelligence Committee, asked whether McCabe was aware of Comey telling the president three times that he was not under investigation, as Trump claimed. McCabe said he could not comment on any conversations that Comey might have had with the president.
McCabe told a Senate panel that it was not “standard practice” to tell an individual whether he is or is not under investigation, but said he could not comment on any conversations that Comey might have had with the president.
Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters so as not to appear to be injecting politics.
Comey himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.
Trump had kept his decision to fire Comey from all but his closest advisers. Many in the White House were ill-prepared for the angry response from Democrats and open concern from some Republicans.
“The challenge they have is that the president sometimes moves so rapidly that they don’t get a team around that gets it organized,” said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump ally. “They need to decide what they’re going to say, and they need to stick with it. Random change isn’t helpful.”
White House officials and others insisted on anonymity Thursday in order to disclose Senate Intelligence Committee private conversations and internal deliberations.
The White House said Trump is weighing options for replacing Comey, a decision that has broad implications for the future of the Russia investigation.
Some senior officials have discussed nominating Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who ran the House committee that investigated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s actions in connection with the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.
‘SIGNIFICANT’ INVESTIGATION
Trump’s advisers have repeatedly tried to downplay the Russia-election matter, with Sanders saying Wednesday that the FBI was “doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation.”
But McCabe characterized the investigation as “highly significant” and assured senators that Comey’s firing would not hinder it
The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, sought assurances from McCabe that he would sound the alarm if the White House or others tried to intervene.
“While we don’t know how long you will be acting as FBI director, my first questions for you, even in this public setting, will be for you to assure the committee that if you come under any political influence from the White House or others to squash this investigation, or impede it in any way, that you will let this committee know,” Warner said.
Warner called the firing of Comey “a shocking development.”
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the president’s decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation, and that is truly unacceptable,” he said.
McCabe promised he would tolerate no interference from the White House and would not provide the administration with updates on its progress.
“You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing,” he declared. He said there has been no interference so far.
The investigation, he made clear, was a priority for the FBI. A day earlier, Sanders had said the investigation was “probably one of the smallest things that they’ve got going on their plate.”
McCabe sought to sidestep delicate questions about the number of agents working on the Russia inquiry, assuring the committee that the bureau had the resources it needed.
Days before he was fired, Comey requested more resources to pursue his investigation, U.S. officials have said. McCabe said he was not aware of any such request and said the Russia investigation is adequately resourced.
It was unclear whether word of the Comey request, said to have been put to Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, ever made its way to Trump.
In a letter sent Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., warned Rosenstein that his reputation as an “independent, apolitical actor” is at risk unless he begins sharing details of Comey’s firing with lawmakers in the coming days.
Schumer asks for answers by Monday to the questions, including whether it’s true that Comey had asked the Justice Department for more resources for the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. elections; whether Rosenstein conveyed that request to the White House; whether he met with Trump on Monday and if he knew the subject of that meeting in advance; and details of the memo Rosenstein wrote for Trump to help justify removing Comey.
In its investigation, the Intelligence Committee also has subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for documents related to the panel’s investigation into any Russian election meddling.
Burr, the committee’s chairman, and Warner issued a joint statement saying the panel decided to issue the subpoena after Flynn, through his lawyer, declined to cooperate with an April 28 request to turn over the documents.
Request letters sent to longtime Trump associate Roger Stone and former Trump foreign-policy adviser Carter Page, which were nearly identical, sought emails, text messages, letters, phone records or any other relevant information they have about meetings or contacts that they or any other individual affiliated with the Trump campaign had had with Russian officials or representatives of Russian business interests. They also ask for information about any financial or real estate holdings related to Russia, including any since divested or sold.
The requests sent to Stone and Page covered documents and information from June 2015 through Jan. 20 of this year. During that period, Flynn accepted tens of thousands of dollars from a Russian state-sponsored television network. He later worked as a foreign agent on behalf of a Turkish businessman, while serving as a top Trump campaign adviser. It also covers the postelection time period in which Trump and his transition team decided to appoint Flynn as national security adviser.
Flynn was fired by Trump after less than one month on the job. The White House said Flynn misled Pence and other top officials about his communications during the presidential transition with Russia’s ambassador to the United States.
Flynn attorney Robert Kelner declined to comment on the newly issued subpoena or say why Flynn declined to provide the information earlier. Flynn had previously been in talks with the committee about agreeing to be interviewed as long as he was granted immunity. Informationcontributed by for Julie this Pace, article Eileenwas Sullivan, Jake Pearson, Darlene Superville, Deb Riechmann, Eric Tucker and Chad Day of The Associated Press; by Adam Goldman and Matthew Rosenberg of The New York Times; and by Ed O’Keefe of The Washington Post.