Trump accuses Comey of lying
President calls the fired FBI chief ‘a leaker’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday that he would be “100 percent” willing to testify under oath in the government’s Russia probe, and he asserted that fired FBI Director James Comey lied in telling Congress that Trump asked him to swear loyalty and to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“No collusion. No obstruction. He’s a leaker,” Trump said of Comey during a Rose Garden news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. “But we want to get back to running our great country.”
No president has been compelled to testify in public — former President Bill Clinton testified privately in a civil suit, though his testimony later became public — and Congress most likely could not require Trump’s testimony.
Trump said that he would be willing to answer questions from the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is running the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
The president’s comments — and an anti-Comey tweet on Friday morning — were Trump’s counter to Comey’s nationally televised testimony Thursday to the Senate intelligence committee.
Several times Comey called Trump a liar, said that the president presumably fired him because of his Russia investigation and described possible obstruction of justice, including a request from Trump to let the probe of Flynn’s contacts with Russia go.
“I didn’t say that,” Trump said. “And there’d be nothing wrong if I did say it.”
The president started his day with a tweet even more forcefully attacking Comey. “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication...and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” he wrote.
After he fired Comey on May 9, Trump tweeted that the ousted FBI chief should be careful in case the White House had secretly taped their conversations.
“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey told the Senate committee Thursday, urging that they be released.
At the news conference Friday, Trump promised to say “in the very near future” if the tapes exist. He told reporters they would be “very disappointed when you hear the answer.”
Even as Trump seemed to accuse his former FBI director of perjury in tweets, the president seized on other parts of Comey’s hours of testimony as validation of his own insistence that he did nothing wrong. Trump’s claim of vindication, trumpeted by his White House and the Republican Party apparatus, was a message of reassurance to his base.
Trump and his allies have focused on Comey’s statement that Trump was not, at the time of their meetings and phone conversations, the subject of an FBI investigation — ignoring Comey’s testimony that he declined to publicize that fact, as the president requested, in case Trump later did come under scrutiny.
Trump, who won the election with 46 percent of the popular vote, has seen his national job approval ratings drop to about 40 percent before Comey’s testimony.
But Trump’s job approval among Republican voters remains high, though there is evidence in recent polls that some of his supporters, particularly in suburbs, have shown signs of wavering.
But even lawmakers most loyal to Trump added caveats to their support.
During a gathering of evangelical Christians in Washington known as the Faith & Freedom conference, held across town during Comey’s testimony, Georgia Sen. David Perdue offered a typical endorsement.
“This president is nobody’s choir boy, right?” Perdue said, eliciting laughs from the crowd. “But he is a man of action.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, speaking at the same conference, emphasized the need to pass conservative laws and appoint conservative judges, mentioning Trump once as he praised the president for nominating Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Trump, who followed the senators, drew sustained applause when he mentioned Gorsuch. As Trump’s legislative agenda founders in Congress, his commitment to name conservative judges to federal courts is the single strongest bonding agent he has for holding Republicans together.
Trump, at the conference, spoke in detail about his support from evangelicals during the campaign and urged them to stay behind him.
He aligned his political fight with theirs for “your right and the right of all Americans to follow and to live by the teachings of their faith.”
“As you know, we’re under siege, you understand that, but we will come out bigger, better and stronger than ever,” he said.
The Republican National Committee has accelerated its efforts to back Trump as well. It circulated talking points before, during and after Comey’s testimony, and has been working to rally rank-and-file voters around the claim that Comey’s testimony vindicated Trump.
Rick Gorka, a spokesman for the party, said the GOP is emphasizing Democratic political obstruction, arguing that Democrats are using the Comey investigation as a reason to block Trump’s legislative agenda and relitigate the election.
“The election is over,” Gorka said.
The House intelligence committee sent a letter Friday asking White House counsel Don McGahn whether any tape recordings or memos of Comey’s conversations with the president exist now or had existed in the past.
The committee also sent a letter to Comey asking for any notes or memos in his possession about the discussions he had with Trump before being abruptly fired last month. The committee is seeking the materials by June 23.
Trump’s private attorney, Marc Kasowitz, seized on Comey’s admission that he had orchestrated the public release of the information. Kasowitz is expected to file a complaint with the Justice Department inspector general next week, according to a person close to the legal team who agreed to speak before the filing on condition that the person’s name is not used.
Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, and Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee, both said Thursday they believed Comey’s account of the events.
“And I think you saw today the overwhelming majority of the intel members, Democrats and Republicans, feel that Jim Comey is credible. Even folks who have been his critics don’t question his integrity, his commitment to the rule of law and his intelligence,” Warner said.