Fired U.S. attorney admits unease with phone calls from White House
Bharara dismissed after refusing call
Preet Bharara, a prominent former U.S. attorney ousted by President Donald Trump, said Sunday that he reported to the Justice Department efforts by the president to "cultivate some kind of relationship" with him, describing a series of phone calls from Trump that made him increasingly uncomfortable.
In his first sit-down interview since his March removal, Bharara said he reported one of the phone calls to the chief of staff for Attorney General Jeff Sessions because it made him uneasy. He said he was dismissed from the important prosecutor's job in Manhattan only 22 hours after he finally refused to take a call from the president.
The recollections add a new dimension to the intensifying debate over Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey, who was removed from his job after private conversations with Trump that he viewed as inappropriate. Comey testified before Congress last week that Trump told him he hoped the FBI would drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump has said Comey's version of events is untrue.
Bharara sat behind Comey throughout the explosive testimony, which led Democrats to suggest that Trump may have obstructed justice.
Bharara told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week" that Comey's account "felt a little bit like deja vu."
"And I'm not the FBI director," he said, "but I was the chief federal law enforcement officer in Manhattan with jurisdiction over a lot of things including, you know, business interests and other things in New York."
Mark Corallo, a spokesman Trump's personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, pushed back against Bharara's characterizations, suggesting on Twitter that if a U.S. attorney refused to take Trump's call "he deserved to be fired."
He accused Bharara of being a "resistance Democrat."
But Bharara said he never got a direct call from President Barack Obama, under whom he worked for more than seven years. And in a tweeted response to Corallo after the interview, Bharara said the "AG office agreed w/ me about call."
Trump and his supporters have downplayed the significance of the president's overtures to Comey and highlighted aspects of Comey's testimony that seemed exculpatory. They also have criticized Comey's admission that he arranged for a friend to pass along details of the encounters to the New York Times.
"I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very 'cowardly!' " Trump said in a tweet Sunday.
The volleys came during an unusually quiet weekend for Trump.
Once the president landed in New Jersey for a visit to a Trump golf club in Bedminister, the White House largely went silent. Photos popped up on social media showing Trump at a graduation party at the club Friday and posing for photos with a young couple who were married there Saturday.
Some of those who came to the president's defense this weekend did so in ways that seemed to contradict the declarative statements made by Kasowitz that Trump "never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone."