Fired FBI director makes his case
Comey accuses White House officials of telling ‘lies, plain and simple.’
Former WASHINGTON — FBI Direc-tor James Comey said in dramatic testimony Thursday he could not trust President Donald Trump to tell the truth, leading him to take extraordinary steps to document their private conversations and to make the details public to spur the appointment of a special counsel to probe the administration over possible links to Russia. He also accused White House officials of telling “lies, plain and simple,” about him and the FBI in an effort to cover up the real reason for his dismissal last month.
“There’s no doubt that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Comey said in highly
anticipated, nationally televised testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee. “The endeavor to change the way the Russia investigation was conducted, that is a big deal.”
He also revealed he was so skeptical about whether Justice Department leadership could handle the politically explosive probe after he was fired that he arranged for details of his private conversations with the president to be made public, so that an outside lawyer would take over the case.
Over nearly three hours of testimony, Comey grimly recounted the events that he said showed the president sought to redirect the Russia probe away from his former national security adviser,
Michael Flynn, and get the FBI to publicly distance the president himself from the probe.
Comey declined to give his opinion of whether he thought the president had obstructed justice, saying that was a determination to be made by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. But recounting private talks in which Trump repeatedly brought up the Russia matter, and asked him to issue public statements about it or drop the probe into Flynn, he said the encounters left no doubt in his mind why he was dismissed.
“I know I was fired because something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was putting pressure on [Trump],” Comey said.
In response to Comey’s testimony, Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, released a statement saying the president “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone.”
Kasowitz also accused Comey of trying to “undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications.”
A former federal prosecutor, Comey testified that he took detailed notes of his private talks with the president. Comey said he did so because he was “honestly concerned” that the president might lie about what was said in their meetings. He said the two spoke in private a total of nine times before he was fired.
Comey’s written account of those discussions, made public Wednesday, has fueled the debate over whether the president may have attempted to obstruct justice by pressuring the FBI director about a sensitive investigation.
The hearing was held in a cavernous space with hundreds of seats to accommodate the intense interest. Some lawmakers not on the committee decided to sit in the audience.
Comey began his testimony by saying he became “confused and increasingly concerned” about the public explanations by White House officials for his firing on May 9, particularly after the president said he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he decided to fire him.
He wasted little time repudiating White House statements that he was fired in part because of low morale among FBI employees who supposedly had soured on his leadership.
“The administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led,” Comey said. “Those were lies, plain and simple. And I’m so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them, and I’m so sorry the American people were told them.”
In his written testimony released Wednesday, Comey described being summoned to a private dinner at the White House in January with the president, who told him: “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.”
Comey said he “didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.”
Comey said the conversation, in which Trump asked whether Comey intended to stay on as FBI director — despite three prior discussions in which Comey had said he would — raised concerns in his mind.
“My common sense told me what’s going on here is he’s looking to get something in exchange for granting my request to stay in the job,” Comey testified.
Comey made clear he felt the discussions were problematic and improper, in that Trump repeatedly pressed him about specific investigations that involved people close to the president.
On Feb. 13, Flynn was forced to resign for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. At the time Flynn was fired, he was being investigated for possibly lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador, Comey said.
The day after Flynn’s ouster, a number of senior officials met the president in the Oval Office to discuss terrorism. At the end of the meeting, according to Comey, Trump asked everyone to leave but Comey.
Sessions, the attorney general, lingered until the president told him to leave, too, Comey said.
“My sense was the attorney general knew he shouldn’t be leaving, which is why he was lingering,” Comey said. “I knew something was about to happen which I should pay very close attention to.”
Once they were alone, the president told Comey he hoped he could let go of the investigation into Flynn.
“When it comes from the president, I took it as a direction,” Comey said.
He said he was shocked and concerned about the president’s request, but decided not to tell Sessions about it because he expected the attorney general would soon recuse himself from the Russia probe, which he eventually did.