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| AFP PHOTO / Brendan Smialowski |
Comey Says Trump Tried to Derail Inquiry and Accuses the White House of ‘Lies’
- In Senate testimony, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, offered a plain-spoken assessment of a president whose conversations unnerved him from the day they met.
- His testimony squarely raised the question of whether President Trump tried to obstruct justice.
The way Comey understood his conversations with the president, Trump asked Comey for three things:
1.His loyalty while appearing to threaten his job security.
2.To “lift the cloud” of any perception the president was under investigation
3.To drop the FBI's investigation into Trump's fired national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“The ask was to get it out that I, the president, am not personally under investigation,” Comey said.
But, Comey testified, Trump did NOT ask him to drop the FBI's broader investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump's campaign helped.
Comey also declined to give a legal judgment on whether Trump obstructed justice or whether he colluded with Russia, saying that's up for the FBI and special counsel to investigate.
Comey thinks the president is a liar
The way Comey tells it, the first time he met Trump, Comey got the heebie-jeebies — for a whole bunch of small reasons but nothing in particular.
“I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting,” Comey said, as to why he left Trump Tower, hopped in an FBI car, opened a laptop and started writing down every detail he could recall about his first meeting with the president. “It led me to believe that I gotta write it down, and I gotta write it down in a detailed way. … I knew that there might come a day where I might need a record of what happened, not just to defend myself and FBI and the integrity of our situation, and the independence of our function.”
Comey also said the president lied about why he fired him:
“The administration then chose to defame me — and, more importantly — the FBI by saying the organization was in disarray and that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple.”
The way Trump handled Comey's firing is what prompted Comey to speak out.
After Trump's tweet, Comey said he couldn't stay silent.
“I woke up in the middle of the night Monday [thinking] that there might be corroboration for our conversation,” Comey testified. “And my judgment was that I needed to get that out in the public square. So I asked a friend of mine to share the content of [my memos] with a reporter.”
Democrats are pretty sure Comey's firing is the key to what the president did wrong.
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Republicans are critical of why Comey didn't speak up sooner.
The president never should have cleared the room,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) of a key Oval Office private meeting between Comey and Trump. “And he never should have asked you to let [the investigation into Flynn] go.
“But I remain puzzled by your response. Your response was: 'I agree that Michael Flynn was a good guy.' You could have said: 'Mr. President, this meeting is inappropriate, this response could compromise the investigation.'"
Comey testified that he was “stunned” the president was asking him to drop an investigation and, in retrospect, he probably should have been more firm with the president. But he just wanted to say something — anything — to end the “awkward” conversations.
And, Comey said, he doesn't regret keeping the president's conversations within a tight circle: "No action was the most important thing I could do to make sure there was no interference in the investigation."
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| Senators Richard M. Burr, right, the Republican chairman of the committee, and Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat. Al Drago/The New York Times |
- We didn’t learn a ton of new information, strictly speaking. One highly notable exception: Comey alluded to not-yet-public information that led him to believe Attorney General Jeff Sessions would need to recuse himself from the FBI’s investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. [Business Insider / Josh Barro]
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Associated Press/Susan Walsh
- (Based on what he proceeded to tell senators in a closed-door briefing Thursday afternoon, it looks like the information in question is that Sessions met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak more times than he’d admitted to — and left all of those meetings out of his confirmation hearings and vetting documents.) [Vox / Dara Lind and Tara Golshan]
- But the heart of the hearing was Comey building a case that President Donald Trump, either out of malice or ignorance, repeatedly attempted to violate the FBI’s independence. It was a case that required a pitch-perfect performance in the role of “upstanding FBI agent,” and Comey nailed it. [Washington Post / Alyssa Rosenberg]
- Comey’s performance was probably sincere, but it’s important to remember that he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s a seasoned operator within government structures. He’s trying to protect the reputation of the agency he formerly led against allegations that it’s mishandled both the 2016 election and the Trump administration. [The Intercept / Mattathias Schwartz and Ryan Devereaux]
- The case that Trump actually committed obstruction of justice wasn’t really strengthened by Comey’s testimony, which is to say, it’s still debatable. What’s less debatable is that Trump acted wrongly. One legal expert described it as “lawful, but awful.” [MSNBC / Alex Seitz-Wald and Ken Dilanian]
- At the end of the day, the legal argument is kind of irrelevant. The body that would be holding Trump to account would be Congress, if it decided to impeach him. Congress can impeach someone without charging them of a formal federal crime. But this Congress still appears profoundly uninterested in doing anything of the kind.
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| Cheriss May/Sipa USA/AP |
“The president’s new at this,” House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said. While playing up Trump’s naivete is one strain of his political defense, legal analysts said it could also be a criminal defense.
For at least one day, the president exhibited restraint on Comey at the urging of his lawyers and advisers.