Many Republican lawmakers said they didn’t pay much attention to ousted FBI Director James Comey’s testimony at the Senate Intelligence Committee, even though many others in Washington were riveted by the nearly three-hour event.
“I saw it on the screen but I didn’t have the volume on,” said Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
“I’ve just seen it in bits and pieces,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
“I didn’t watch two seconds of it,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., while Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said he watched “pretty close to zero,” of the hearing.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he was too busy to tune in when asked for a reaction by reporters.
“I didn’t clear my schedule for a hearing over in the Senate today,” Ryan said.
Republicans didn’t immediately issue any press releases reacting to Comey’s testimony, as they sometimes do when a hearing is a big news event.
Corker said he’d put out a statement later Thursday, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he planned to “review the testimony carefully,” before drawing any conclusions. Ryan suggested he would read the transcript at night.
“It’s not that I don’t take it seriously,” he said.
Missing from hallway conversations with Republicans was any outright defense of Trump, who, it was revealed by Comey, had not been under investigation by him for colluding with Russian operatives as so many of his political opponents and many in the media had suggested.
Graham said from his limited viewing of the hearing, Trump did not commit a crime by telling Comey he hoped the FBI would back off a probe into ousted national security adviser Mike Flynn.
“I don’t think he broke the law, but if being a bull in a china shop, rude and crude, was a crime, he’d be guilty,” Graham said. “But it’s not.”
Still, Graham said Comey’s testimony, in which he accused Trump of being a liar, is hurtful to the president.
“In the court of public opinion, this is probably not good for the president,” Graham said. “He doesn’t come off looking good.”
Democrats, meanwhile, appeared to be paying much closer attention to the hearing.
“It was riveting,” Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who attended the hearing but is not on the intelligence committee. “Especially when he said one of the reasons that he took notes is the fact that he knew the president lied, so he wanted to be very precise. That was quite riveting.”
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Comey’s testimony was “just the way I expected it would be — pretty direct, gave the facts.”
Leahy wants Comey to testify before the Judiciary Committee, on which he serves as a senior member. “There are some questions we could ask,” Leahy said.
