COMEY’S EXPLOSIVE ACCUSATIONS: LIAR
Trump lied about bid to kill Flynn probe Trump lied by calling Russia case a hoax Trump lied about why I was fired
JAMES COMEY said Thursday that President Trump and his team smeared him with “lies,” as he qestioned Trump’s character and repeatedly suggested during stunning testimony that the President couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth.
In his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the fired FBI director repeatedly and bluntly accused Trump of lying about their interactions — and being a liar by nature.
Comey’s first hit came early, when he accused the Trump administration of creating phony behind-the-scenes FBI drama to justify Trump’s abrupt dismissal of him in May.
“The administration then chose to defame me — and, more importantly, the FBI — by saying the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader,” Comey said. “Those were lies, plain and simple.” Later, Comey said his first meeting with Trump — which came two weeks before the businessman was inaugurated as President — left him believing the next commanderin-chief might have a tenuous relationship with the truth.
“I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting,” Comey recalled about their Jan. 6 encounter at Trump Tower.
He didn’t say what specifically caused him concern, but said he started keeping written records of all of his talks with Trump because of “the nature of the person that I was interacting with and my read of that person.”
“I knew that there might come a day where I might need a record of what happened, not just to defend myself and the FBI and the integrity of our situation, and the independence of our function,” Comey said.
He used the L-word time and again throughout his testimony, showing he had little faith in Trump to tell the truth.
The White House pushed back at the accusations.
“I can definitely say the President is not a liar,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. “I think it’s frankly insulting that that question would be asked.”
In a remarkable 21/2 hours of testimony, Comey also suggested Attorney General Jeff Sessions might have more conflicts of interest in the Russia probe than what’s publicly known and that he believes Trump fired him to change the course of the Russia investigation. He admitted he had orchestrated a leak about his conversation with the President in hopes that it would lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Amplifying the written testimony he gave Wednesday to the Senate panel investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Comey said he’d been troubled by Trump’s private comment to him that he investigationwanted into him Trump’sto drop former an national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
“I hope you can let this go,” he quoted the President as saying Feb. 14 — one day after he forced Flynn to resign for having misled Vice President Pence about the substance of a conversation he’d had with a Russian diplomat.
Comey called Trump’s comments “a disturbing thing,” and said that he he considered them a “direction” — which he ignored. He said he told his colleagues at the FBI about the interaction, but not his boss Sessions, whom Trump had sent out of the Oval Office before making the astonishing request. Trump lawyer Marc Kasowitz maintained Comey was the one who was lying, and that Trump “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone.” The former FBI director questioned his own actions, admitting he should have stood up to the President and calling his conduct in the moment “slightly cowardly.”
“I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in,” he said. “Maybe other people would be stronger in the circumstance, but that’s how I conducted myself.”
He said he didn’t tell Sessions about the interactions because he expected the attorney general to recuse himself from the Russia investigation “for a variety of reasons.”
He said he couldn't say more in an open setting, suggesting that those reasons are part of the ongoing Russia probe.
Sessions did later recuse himself from the probe after it was revealed he had two undisclosed meetings with the same Russian diplomat Flynn had spoken with.
Following Comey’s later closed meeting with the Senate panel, CNN reported that Sessions might have had a third undisclosed meeting with the diplomat.
Comey was fired after Trump
got memos from Sessions and the attorney general’s deputy questioning the director’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, but Comey said he doesn’t believe that’s why he was fired.
“I take the President at his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” he said, referring to remarks Trump made to NBC after his termination.
“The endeavor was to change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.”
Comey made it clear that the President’s public remarks concerned him — and even tweaked Trump for his tweet ominously alluding to “tapes” of their private conversations.
“I’ve seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” he said.
The former FBI director said that Trump tweet led to his asking a friend who teaches at Columbia Law School to pass along information to the New York Times in the hopes that it would spur the appointment of a special prosecutor, a sign of how little faith he had in Sessions and the Justice Department to protect the case from Trump. Prof. Daniel Richman quickly confirmed he was Comey’s go-between. Kasowitz (photo) used that revelation to accuse Comey of making “unauthorized disclosures . . . of privileged communications” with Trump to the press. Comey maintained the memo was not classified.
Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) said Comey’s prepared testimony on his interactions with Trump was “disturbing” and “utterly shocking,” and warned that Trump’s comments raise “separate and troubling” questions about his conduct.
“This is not how a President of the United States behaves,” he said.