Comey testimony to detail Trump talks
- Fired FBI Director James Comey will testify under oath Thursday that President Donald Trump repeatedly pressed him for his “loyalty” and directly pushed him to “lift the cloud” of investigation shadowing his White House by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the probe into his campaign’s Russia ties.
Comey’s detailed and vivid recollections of his one-on-one conversations with Trump were revealed in seven pages of prepared testimony released Wednesday, the day before his much-anticipated appearance before the Senate intelligence committee.
His remarks paint a picture of an FBI director so disconcerted by his interactions with the president that he began keeping written memos of their private discussions. He’ll tell lawmakers he believed the president was trying to create a “patronage relationship” with him and de- scribe in detail an Oval Office meeting in which Trump urged him not to investigate ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials.
But the ex-FBI director also will validate Trump’s assertion that he was not personally a target of the federal counterintelligence investigation into possible campaign collusion with Russia. Comey says he did offer the president that “assurance” but resisted Trump’s appeals to make that information public.
“The FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change,” Comey says in the prepared remarks.
The ex-FBI director’s testimony recounts his conversations with the apparent precision of a veteran lawman. Comey notes he had nine one-on-
one interactions with Trump over a fourmonth stretch,
The first meeting with Trump after the inauguration occurred on Jan. 27, during a private dinner at the White House that Comey came to view as an attempt by the president to “create some sort of patronage relationship.”
According to Comey, Trump asked if he wanted to remain as FBI director and declared: “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty.” Comey says he replied that he could offer his honesty, and that when Trump said he wanted “honest loyalty,” Comey paused and said, “You will get that from me.”
House Speaker Paul Ryan on MSNBC Wednesday said it was “obviously” not appropriate for Trump to ask Comey for his loyalty.
Comey also describes at length a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which he believed Trump asked him to back off an investigation into Flynn.