Trump warns Comey on Twitter about ‘tapes’
Spectre of Nixon raised again in ominous tweet
WASHINGTON •In an ominous warning, President Donald Trump declared Friday that fired FBI Director James Comey had better hope there are no “tapes” of their private conversations. Trump’s tweet came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times he wasn’t under FBI investigation.
Comey has not confirmed Trump’s account, which concerns the FBI’s probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and allegations of Trump campaign collaboration with the Russians.
And on Friday, a person close to the former director recounted a Comey-Trump dinner in January in which Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty. Comey declined, instead offering “honest.” When Trump then pressed for “honest loyalty,” Comey told him, “You will have that,” recounted the Comey associate.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed that report and said the president would “never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty.” Officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump recorded his discussions with the FBI director.
Details of the dinner were first reported by The New York Times.
Trump, in an interview Thursday with NBC News, had this version: “I said, ‘If it’s possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation?’ He said you are not under investigation.” Trump said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Comey was asking to keep his job.
The president’s Twitter comments on Friday again raised the spectre of Richard Nixon, whose secretly taped conversations and telephone calls in the White House ultimately led to his downfall in the Watergate scandal. Trump’s firing of Comey already has left him with the dubious distinction of being the first president since Nixon to fire a law enforcement official overseeing an investigation tied to the White House.
Trump was widely known to record some phone conversations at his office in Trump Tower during his business career.
Associates of the former FBI director said they believed any recording would validate Comey’s side of the story.
“It would be great were they recorded,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor at Columbia Law School.
Meanwhile, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Friday that Trump was “dangerous” and that “his credibility has been destroyed.”
Trump, in his NBC interview, said he had been intending to fire Comey for months and that it had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.
But he also said, “In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a madeup story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”
Even before Trump’s provocative tweets, the White House was scrambling to clarify why Comey was fired.
The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey’s handling of last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails as the impetus.