Comey’s compelling case
In the picture vividly and credibly painted by former FBI Director Jim Comey in sworn testimony to Congress, the President of the United States engaged in a pattern of deeply disturbing behavior that could well amount to obstruction of justice. But whatever the legal definition, President Trump doggedly demanded the head of the nation’s top federal law enforcement agency put the chief executive’s political and personal advantage before a full and fair investigation of the evidence.
That is, by any measure, inappropriate and unethical conduct.
Comey’s detailed rendering, the opening statement for a Thursday hearing sure to deliver additional revelations, adds texture and detail to interchanges that have been previously reported.
Trump bluntly demanded personal loyalty (“I need loyalty, I expect loyalty”) from a man sworn to uphold the laws and the Constitution.
Trump, after a group briefing, pulled Comey aside into a private meeting and asked him to drop the FBI’s look into potentially illegal behavior by then-just-fired former national security adviser Michael Flynn (“I hope you can let this go”).
To Comey, “I had 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.”
Trump applied persistent pressure to win public pronouncements he was not under investigation (to “lift the cloud”) — raising the issue in many of the nine one-on-one conversations Comey meticulously documented, in notes taken immediately after each interaction.
When told, the last of many times, that the proper way for a President to comment on an ongoing criminal investigation was for the White House counsel to contact the leadership of the Justice Department, not for the President to jawbone the FBI director, Trump seemed to agree, adding, oddly, “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.”
It adds up to obsessively defensive behavior by a man bent on shaping, shading and ultimately ending an ongoing criminal inquiry involving his own campaign team’s activities.
Comey has many questions to answer Thursday, including precisely what led him to interpret Trump’s plea as direct pressure, and what exactly in “his instincts” told him that Trump sought to “create some sort of patronage relationship.”
But in the first formal salvo fired, it is the President who has far more explaining to do — and who will almost certainly refuse to do it.