Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Comey links firing, probe into Russia
Says he leaked memo to spur inquiry
WASHINGTON — In an explosive hearing, former FBI Director James Comey told Congress on Thursday that he believed President Donald Trump fired him to impede the FBI’s Russia investigation and described the president’s claims that the FBI was poorly led and in disarray as “lies, plain and simple.”
“It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Comey told the Senate intelligence committee during a three-hour, nationally televised hearing. “I was fired in some way to change — or the endeavor was to change — the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.”
Comey also said that he decided to write memos for the FBI after his private meetings and phone calls with Trump because he didn’t trust the president to tell the truth. “I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meetings,” said Comey, a registered Republican most of his life who
previously served under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Comey’s charges provided riveting political drama but no new bombshells about Russian meddling in the 2016 election or improper contacts by the Trump campaign or the White House with Russian authorities.
He noted that after he was fired on May 9, Trump had tweeted that Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey said Thursday, saying recordings would confirm his account.
Comey said he “woke up in the middle of the night” a few days later “because it didn’t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape.”
He decided to send copies of his memos about his conversations with the president to a friend, Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School, with instructions to give them to a reporter at The New York Times. “I asked my friend, ‘Make sure this gets out,’ ” he said. “I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
The strategy paid off when the Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel for the overlapping counter-intelligence and criminal investigations.
Comey said he gave his copies of the memos to Mueller but said Richman might still also have them. Comey said he would be happy to have the memos released.
Richman declined to comment Thursday. The White House said it had no comment on whether tapes exist.
Comey said Trump sought repeatedly to get him to publicly declare that the president was not under investigation. Comey said he had declined to do so because he would be duty bound to declare otherwise if the focus of the investigation shifted.
He said he first told Trump he wasn’t under investigation because he worried that Trump would believe the FBI was out to get him.
Comey also complained that he thought Trump sought a “patronage relationship” in which the FBI director be beholden to the president.
“The statue of justice has a blindfold on because you’re not supposed to be peeking out to see if your patron is pleased or not with what you’re doing,” he said.
None of the Republicans on the committee challenged Comey’s detailed recollection of his conversations with Trump, although several pressed him to explain why he had not objected to Trump at the time or raised his concerns with Attorney General Jeff Sessions or members of Congress.
Several also seized on Comey’s confirmation that he had told Trump he was not under investigation.
Trump met with senior aides and watched parts of the hearing from the White House dining room, aides said. The president did not tweet about it or mention Comey during a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference.
The White House refused to comment on the substance of Comey’s testimony, although the deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, responded angrily when asked about his charge that the president had lied. “No I can definitively say the president is not a liar,” she told reporters.
After the hearing, Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, said Comey “completely vindicated” the president.
He denied key parts of Comey’s account, insisting that Trump never asked Comey to back off the investigation of national security adviser Michael Flynn or asked Comey for a loyalty pledge.
“Mr. Comey has now finally confirmed publicly what he repeatedly told the president privately: The president was not under investigation as part of any probe into Russian interference,” Kasowitz said.
He also blasted Comey for disclosing his conversations with Trump, calling them “privileged communications” that should not be made public.
Comey described a series of awkward and often tense conversations with Trump. He recalled how Trump ordered Sessions, senior adviser Jared Kushner and others out of the Oval Office so he could address Comey in private on Feb. 14, a day after Flynn had been forced to resign for lying about his contacts with the Russian ambassador.
“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go,” Comey quoted Trump as saying.
Comey did not say whether he believed Trump sought to obstruct justice.
Asked if Trump had colluded with Russia, Comey said he could not answer in an open hearing.