TOMORROW, COMEY TALKS,

I need loyalty’: James Comey’s riveting prepared testimony about what Trump asked him, annotated

WASHINGTON POST

By Amber Phillips

Holy …. word I can't say in a family newsletter. James Comey just dropped a bomb on President Trump. Ahead of the fired FBI director's testimony Thursday to Congress about his conversations with Trump, the Senate Intelligence Committee released Comey's seven-page statement detailing every single time the president asked him about the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump's campaign helped. Ahead of the fired FBI director's testimony Thursday to Congress about his conversations with Trump, the Senate Intelligence Committee released Comey's seven-page statement detailing every single time the president asked him about the FBI's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump's campaign helped. And forget meddling by Russia. Comey was concerned that Trump was meddling in the FBI's independent investigation into Russia. Specifically, Comey details, Trump appeared to be trying to get the FBI to lay off its investigation into Trump's now-fired national security adviser, Michael Flynn. Until this point, we've only heard secondhand accounts of these conversations. But this is the first we're hearing about them from Comey — and we'll hear more Thursday when he testifies in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We annotated Comey's entire statement here (and if you only click on one thing, make it that.) Comey testifying in July. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP) Here are the top lines: “My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch.” — This is how Comey describes a dinner Trump invited him to — just the two of them — on Jan. 27. At that dinner, Comey said, Trump asked him this: “A few moments later, the President said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.' I 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.” At a Feb. 14 Oval Office meeting, after everyone else had left the room: “The door closed. The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, 'He is a good guy and has been through a lot.' He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.' I replied only that 'he is a good guy.' " In an April phone call: “On the morning of April 11, the President called me and asked what I had done about his request that I 'get out' that he is not personally under investigation.” Comey says Trump went on to say in that call: "'Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.' I did not reply or ask him what he meant by 'that thing.' " A month later, Trump fired Comey. What we still don't know Comey's testimony is absolutely remarkable for the level of detail, the candor and the implications it raises for the president. Mostly: Did Trump obstruct justice? We don't know that. And Comey's testimony raises a lot of questions that senators will be sure to ask him tomorrow, like: If you were so concerned about Trump's actions, why didn't you tell anyone about it, like your boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions? Why are you telling basically the whole world all of this now, after Trump fired you? Why should we trust your recollection, given you misstated a key fact about Hillary Clinton's emails last time you testified to Congress?