Former FBI Director James Comey will testify President Trump asked him to end the investigation into Mike Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday. Comey writes Trump also asked him to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation over his administration.
Comey, according to his printed testimony posted online Wednesday, will detail one-on-one conversations he had with Trump before he was fired.
Comey said he took notes of his conversations with Trump immediately after they happened, a practice he did not use when he spoke with former President Obama.
During one talk with Trump, at the end of February 14 counterterrorism briefing in the Oval Office, the president asked the other security and law enforcement officials in the room to leave, except for Comey.
When the two were alone, Comey said Trump told him, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn.”
Comey said Trump began by saying Flynn did nothing wrong by speaking with the Russian ambassador during the transition, but “he had to let him go because he 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,'” Comey writes in his testimony. “I replied only that ‘he is a good guy.’ (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would ‘let this go.'”
Comey said he interpreted this as Trump requesting the FBI stop investigating Flynn. He did not consider Trump to be asking for the FBI to drop the broader investigation into Russia and possible links with the campaign, but he still found the president’s actions to be “very concerning.”
“I had understood the president to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December,” Comey wrote.
“I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what had just happened with Flynn’s departure and the controversy around his account of his phone calls. Regardless, it was very concerning, given the FBI’s role as an independent investigative agency.”
Comey’s testimony also recounts March 30 phone call with Trump, initiated by the president.
In that conversation, Comey says Trump described the Russia investigation as “a cloud” that was “impairing” his presidency.
“He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia,” Comey wrote in his testimony.
“He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’ I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn’t find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him.”
Trump finished the conversation by asking Comey if he get make public that the president was not a direct focus of the FBI’s Russia investigation.
“He finished by stressing ‘the cloud’ that was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country and said he hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn’t being investigated. I told him I would see what we could do, and that we would do our investigative work well and as quickly as we could.”
Comey, who had only spoke with President Obama alone twice, was uncomfortable about his private conversations with Trump.
Following his talk with Trump about Flynn, Comey spoke with Attorney General Jeff Sessions about what Trump had asked of him.
“I took the opportunity to implore the attorney general to prevent any future direct communication between the president and me,” Comey wrote in his testimony. “I told the AG that what had just happened – him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind – was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply.”
In his testimony, Comey also details a Jan. 27 dinner he had with Trump in the White House at the president’s request.
Comey was concerned about the appearance of meeting to begin with because he felt it was an inappropriate venue for an FBI director to participate in, he said.
“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,” Comey will testify. “That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch.”
Early on in the dinner, Trump then told Comey, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.”
Comey said he didn’t react to Trump’s request, so “awkward silence” ensued.
“We simply looked at each other in silence,” Comey recalled.
Near the end of the dinner, Trump repeated his request for loyalty, Comey said.
“I replied, ‘You will always get honesty from me,'” Comey wrote.
“He (Trump) paused and then said, ‘That’s what I want, honest loyalty.’ I paused, and then said, ‘You will get that from me.’ As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase ‘honest loyalty’ differently, but I decided it wouldn’t be productive to push it further. The term – honest loyalty – had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect.”
