DEAR DON LETTER
COMEY MEMO: TRUMP DEMANDED LOYALTY FROM FBI CHIEF
Ousted FBI chief James B. Comey’s much anticipated testimony — expected to include allegations President Trump demanded loyalty and urged him to “lift the cloud” of the Russia probe — is set to light up Washington, D.C., today and could even trigger a real-time tweet storm from the embattled commander in chief.
Comey will read seven pages of prepared remarks and then field questions from Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee starting at 10 a.m. His testimony will be carried live on all three major TV networks, who will interrupt scheduled programming in a sign of just how hypedup Comey’s day in Congress has become.
He is expected to testify that Trump told him: “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” during a one-on-one White House dinner on Jan. 27.
“I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed,” Comey claims in his testimony. “We simply looked at each other in silence.”
Later, Comey told Trump: “You will always get honesty from me.”
“That’s what I want, honest loyalty,” Trump replied.
“You will get that from me,” said Comey.
During the same dinner, Comey accused Trump of trying to create “some sort of patronage relationship” by asking whether he wanted to keep his post as FBI director, with the president noting that “lots of people wanted my job.”
During another one-onone meeting in the Oval Office, Comey claims Trump asked him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had been fired a day earlier.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” said Trump. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Comey claims he refused to tell Trump that he would.
Then, in a March 30 phone call, Trump asked Comey what could be done to “lift the cloud” of
the Russia investigation and lamented the scandal was preventing him from making deals for the country.
The Trump White House yesterday declared victory over one revelation in the Comey testimony — that he indeed did assure the then president-elect during their first meeting on Jan. 6 that he was not under investigation.
“The president feels completely and totally vindicated,” Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s attorney, said in a statement.
And Trump’s supporters likely took heart from other parts of Comey’s statement, such as, “The President went on to say that if there were some ‘satellite’ associates of his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out.”
Republicans and Democrats have taken turns casting Comey as a political hero or a back-stabbing scoundrel. Trump blasted him for not recommending charges against Hillary Clinton in her private email server probe last summer, then praised him for reopening the case days before the election. Democrats have taken the exact opposite tack. Those sharply shifting attitudes could muddle public perception of Comey’s credibility.
Gleeful Democrats cast his statement as a bombshell development in the monthslong Russia scandal. “This whole thing is crazy,” tweeted Bay State U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
But Democrats risked overplaying their hand, invoking comparisons to former President Richard Nixon. Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Edward J. Markey called on Comey to turn over his memos to Congressional investigators because they could be “today’s version of the Watergate tapes.”