QUOTE OF THE DAY
Comey lied under oath, he contends
“You’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer.” President Donald Trump, declining to say whether he made recordings of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey, promising to give an answer in a “very short period of time”
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday accused James Comey, the fired FBI director, of lying under oath to Congress, saying he would gladly provide sworn testimony disputing Comey’s assertion that the president forced him out because of his handling of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with
Russia.
Trump said the comments Thursday by Comey, whom he called “a leaker,” had proved that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia, nor any obstruction of justice by the president. He hinted again that he had tapes of
his private talks with the former FBI chief that would disprove Comey’s account, but he declined to confirm the existence of any recordings.
“Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,” Trump said in the White House Rose Garden, during a news conference with the visiting Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis.
He dismissed Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating whether his campaign worked with Russia to sway the 2016 election, as a politically motivated stunt orchestrated by adversaries bitter about his victory in November.
“That was an excuse by the Democrats, who lost an election that some people think they shouldn’t have lost,” he said. “But we were very, very happy, and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said, and some of the things that he said just weren’t true.”
The remarks were a defiant response from Trump, who had remained silent on social media during Comey’s day of testimony Thursday.
Comey told Congress that the president had not personally been under investigation while he was the FBI director, and that at one point Trump suggested he would like to find out whether any of his associates had done anything wrong.
But his account also strongly suggested that Trump had tried to influence his handling of the Russia investigation.
Trump denied that he had ever asked Comey to drop the FBI investigation into his former national security adviser’s dealings with Russia, or asked for a pledge of loyalty, as Comey asserted Thursday. Those conversations are reflected in memos Comey wrote and now are in the possession of Robert Mueller, the special counsel in the Russia investigation who was named after Comey’s firing.
“I didn’t say that,” Trump said of the request regarding the former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. “And there’d be nothing wrong if I did say it.”
Of the loyalty pledge from Comey, Trump said, “I hardly know the man; I’m not going to ask him to pledge allegiance.”
Asked whether he would be willing to provide his version under oath, Trump responded, “100 percent.” He said of Mueller, “I would be glad to tell him exactly what I just told you.”
Trump also denied Comey’s assertion, based on notes the former director made after a one-on-one dinner in January, that the president had asked him to declare his “loyalty.”
PANEL SEEKS TAPES
The president declined repeatedly to say whether, as he suggested last month in a Twitter post, he had recordings of his conversations with Comey. “I’ll tell you about it over a very short period of time,” he said. “You’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer.”
The comment appeared to catch the attention of the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia probe.
Reps. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., quickly announced that they had written to Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, requesting that any recordings or memos about Trump’s conversations with Comey be furnished to the intelligence committee by June 23.
They also said they had made a formal request to Comey for copies of the memos he testified about on Thursday or notes reflecting the meetings.
Earlier Friday, Trump posted on Twitter that Comey had given him “vindication” in the Russia investigation.
“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication,” he wrote at 6:10 a.m.
He added, “and WOW, Comey is a leaker,” referring to the former director’s admission that he had orchestrated the leak of the contents of a memo detailing Oval Office discussions with the president to The New York
Times through a friend.
‘DEEP STATE’ CLAIM
Trump’s team, led by his personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, on Friday was preparing a counterattack on Comey based in part on his admission that he arranged the leak of his account of the conversation with Trump in which he says the president suggested the FBI halt its investigation into Flynn.
The president’s lawyers plan to file a complaint with the Justice Department inspector general next week, arguing that Comey should not have shared what they call privileged communications, according to two people involved in the matter.
A spokesman for the Justice Department inspector general declined to comment on the matter, which was first reported by Fox News and CNN.
On the Today show, former campaign aide Corey Lewandowski stated that Comey was part of the intelligence “deep state” out to undermine Trump. The president and his aides have complained about leaks, purportedly from the intelligence community, throughout the investigations by the FBI and Congress into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Trump campaign’s contact with Russian officials.
“His goal is to manipulate media, manipulate the press. … He’s everything that’s wrong in Washington,” Lewandowski said.
The lawyers also plan to send a complaint to the Senate Judiciary Committee raising questions about Comey’s previous testimony to that panel. On May 3, in response to Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee chairman, Comey said he had never been an anonymous source for news outlets about the investigation involving Trump’s team or authorized anyone at the FBI to be.
In his testimony Thursday, Comey said the memo whose contents he had a friend leak was not classified and therefore not inappropriate to make public. Trump’s lawyers argue that it was subject to executive privilege, although the president has never asserted privilege over his conversations with Comey, and independent legal experts have expressed doubt that he could. Comey arranged the leak May 15 after he was fired and after the May 3 hearing, so it would not be in direct conflict with that testimony.
Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the committee, both said Thursday that 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.
There were few outward signs of concern from top Republican officials.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky on Friday boasted of the GOP’s accomplishments under Trump thus far and promised more to come, making no mention of Comey in a speech. A group of House conservatives discussed taxes and the budget, with no reference to Comey or the federal investigations into Russia’s election meddling.
“I think the last 24, 48 hours were all good for the president, confirmed he was telling the truth all along, that he wasn’t under investigation,” GOP Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio said Friday.
Some Republicans explained away Trump’s interactions with Comey as the understandable blunders of a Washington neophyte.
“It’s no secret to anybody that this president is not experienced in the ways of Washington, of how these investigations work,” said GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who sits on the intelligence committee.
“When you have the FBI director telling you three times you’re not the subject of an investigation and you ask him, ‘would you please announce that publicly’ and he refuses, I can understand why the president would be frustrated by that.”