Comey memos document Trump’s early fixations
WASHINGTON — They are among the most storied memos in recent Washington history.
Under pressure from Republicans, the Justice Department on Thursday sent Congress the seven memos, spanning 15 pages, that then-FBI Director James Comey wrote over four months last year about his interactions with President Donald Trump. The memos track Comey’s congressional testimony, interviews and his new book, “A Higher Loyalty.”
They also offer colorful details about a president fixated on jailing leakers and in disproving salacious allegations against him.
Q: What are the memos, and why did Comey write them?
A: Comey started writing the memos after his first one-on-one conversation with Trump in January 2017 and shared them with FBI leadership.
He had not taken notes after his meetings with President Barack Obama, but Comey has said he wanted to make a contemporaneous record of his discussions with Trump because he feared they could be misrepresented.
Q: Why are the memos important?
A: After Trump fired Comey in May, Comey wanted it known that Trump had pressured him to back off an FBI investigation of Michael Flynn, the national security adviser who was fired and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians. Comey told a friend to share excerpts from the memos with reporters. That disclosure, which raised questions of possible obstruction of justice by Trump, was a factor in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s decision to appoint special counsel Robert Mueller.
Q: How does President Trump come off in the memos?
A: Terrible. According to Comey, Trump delivered a “conversation-as-jigsaw puzzle” monologue about the size of the crowd at his inauguration, about luxury in the White House, about allegations that he had consorted with prostitutes in Moscow, and about Hillary Clinton’s supposed crimes. Comey writes that he grew uncomfortable in his meetings with Trump.
Q: Why are we seeing the memos now?
A: House Republicans have demanded numerous records from the Justice Department as they scrutinize how it handled the Russia and the Clinton investigations. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the House intelligence committee chairman, used some of the material to issue his own memo, which criticized court-approved eavesdropping of Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide who visited Moscow during the campaign. Republicans sought the Comey memos in hopes they would reveal contradictions between his writings at the time and his subsequent congressional testimony and memoir.
Q: What’s new about Michael Flynn?
A: According to Comey, Trump expressed concern days after he took office that Flynn had “serious judgment issues,” a startling claim about the president’s top national security aide. At issue, Comey writes, was Flynn’s failure to advise Trump of a phone call nearly a week earlier from an unspecified foreign leader, reportedly Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Q: What did Trump say about Russia?
A: According to Comey, Trump never asked what Russia did to interfere in the 2016 election. Instead, he was fixated on rebutting an allegation, from a dossier by a former British spy, that Russian intelligence had evidence that Trump had asked prostitutes to urinate on a bed in his hotel suite in Moscow in 2013 because Obama had slept there.
The president asked Comey to disprove the charge to reassure his wife, Melania, that it was untrue, and brought the issue up several times. In a February 2017 meeting in the Oval Office, Trump said “the hookers thing is nonsense” but that Putin had told him, “we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world,” Comey wrote.
Q: What did he ask Comey to do about media leaks?
A: Trump pressured Comey to shut down leaks and called for prosecution of leakers. Comey said he agreed that he “would like to nail one to the door as a message,” but cautioned Trump that getting convictions was difficult.