Trump: Comey lied

A defiant President Trump on Friday accused ousted FBI chief James Comey of lying under oath — declaring that he never asked him for a pledge of loyalty or to drop the probe into his ex-national security adviser.

“I didn’t say that,” Trump declared at the White House during an afternoon news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, adding that he was “100 percent” willing to testify under oath about his conversations with Comey.

“And there would be nothing wrong if I did say it . . . but I did not say that.”

Asked directly if Comey lied before the Senate intelligence committee when he testified that Trump asked for the pledge and that the probe be deep-sixed, the president did not use that word.

But he repeated his assertion that portions of Comey’s testimony were untrue.

“Well, I didn’t say that. I will tell you, I didn’t say that,” he said. “Some of the things that he said just weren’t true.”

Pressed further, Trump turned combative.

“I hardly know the man. I’m not going to say I want you to pledge allegiance. Who would do that? Who would ask a man to pledge alle- giance? Think of that. I hardly know the man. It doesn’t make sense,” the president said.

“I didn’t say that and I didn’t say the other,” he added, referring to the charge that he also asked Comey to drop the probe of Mike Flynn, who was fired as national security adviser after lying about contacts with Russia.

The president ducked twice when asked whether he had recorded his chats with Comey, as he had once suggested.

“Well, I’ll tell you something about that maybe sometime in the very near future,” he said. “You’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer.”

House Intelligence Committee leaders also want to know if the tapes exist — and asked the White House to hand them over by June 23.

After Comey was fired, Trump had tweeted, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

At the news conference, Trump also repeated criticism of Comey first leveled in a tweet Friday at 6:10 a.m.

“No collusion. No obstruction. He’s a leaker. But we want to get back to running our great country,” Trump said.

“We were very, very happy and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said.”

The former FBI leader told the Senate that Trump was not — at the time — personally under investigation in the Russia probe, confirming what Trump wrote in his May 9 letter dismissing Comey.

The president also suggested that the story of Russia’s meddling in the US election — subject of both ongoing FBI and congressional probes — was “an excuse” cooked up by Democrats for losing the election.

And he repeated that he would testify under oath if asked to by special counsel Robert Mueller, the former FBI chief assigned by the Justice Department to oversee the Russia investigation.

“I’d be glad to tell him exactly what I just told you,” Trump said.

Trump’s stunning charges escalated an already fraught confrontation between his administration and Comey.

Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, slammed Comey on the “Today” show saying he was part of the “deep state” and was out to get the president.

“His goal is to manipulate media, manipulate the press. He’s everything that’s wrong in Washington,” Lewandowski said.

In his testimony, Comey accused the Trump administration of “spreading lies, plain and simple” about him and the FBI after he got fired.