From Comey’s lips
The question that faces members of Congress today as they hear former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony of his encounters with President Trump is when does bullying become an attempt to obstruct justice? When does a merely inappropriate conversation become an effort to intimidate?
Comey in prepared testimony released by the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday details his one-on-one meetings with Trump and his own level of discomfort with the president’s efforts to impact the work of an independent agency.
“My instincts told me,” Comey says, “that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship.
“That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch,” he added.
It should also concern Trump’s nominee to replace Comey (announced by the president in a tweet yesterday), Christopher Wray, a former federal prosecutor and by all accounts a stand-up kind of guy.
We have been hearing for weeks — ever since Comey’s abrupt firing — bits and pieces from his memos to himself as reported by associates. Today the nation gets to hear those accounts from Comey’s own lips, including Trump’s request on Feb. 14 about former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, fired the previous day.
“I understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December,” Comey says. “I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.”
But subsequently Trump asks him on at least two occasions what he could do to “lift the cloud” of that broader Russia investigation and to “get out” that he wasn’t personally under investigation.
Comey notes that he did not tell the president that the FBI and the Justice Department do not make statements about there not being an open case, “most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.”
In the end, Comey couldn’t be intimidated or bullied but he could be fired. Happily for the institutions America holds dear and for the rule of law the investigations continue.