Former FBI Director James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, his first public comments since being fired last month by President Trump.
Here are seven things we learned during the testimony:
1) Comey accused Trump of lying: “Although the law requires no reason at all to fire an FBI director, 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, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader,” Comey said in his opening remarks. “Those were lies plain and simple. And I am so sorry that the FBI work force had to hear them and I am so sorry that the American people were told them.”
2) Comey believes he was fired because of the FBI’s Russia probe. “It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation. I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted. That is a very big deal,” he told the panel.
3) Comey took notes in case President Trump later decided to lie about their meetings. “I was alone with the president of the United States. I was talking about matters that touch on the FBI’s core responsibility and that related to the president-elect personally. Then [there was] the nature of the person. I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document,” Comey said, citing a January meeting at Trump Tower in New York.
4) Comey asked a friend to leak his memo to the New York Times in hopes it would lead to a special investigator on Russia: Comey revealed that he asked his friend, a professor at Columbia University, to leak the contents of one of his memos. “My judgment was that I needed to get that out into the public square,” he said, later adding: “I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
5) Comey hopes there are tapes: “Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey said, referring Trump’s tweet about “tapes” of their conversations. He added later: “The president surely knows whether he taped and, if he did, my feelings aren’t hurt. Release all the tapes: I’m good with it.”
6) Comey was never explicitly asked to drop the Michael Flynn investigation: President Trump never explicitly asked Comey to drop the FBI probe into former national security advisor Mike Flynn. “I took it as a direction,” Comey explained. “I mean, this is a president of the United States with me alone saying, ‘I hope this.’ I took it as, this is what he wants me to do. I didn’t obey that, but that’s the way I took it.” When asked by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., if he considered that an “order” to drop the investigation, Comey said yes.
7) Comey was told by Trump he was excited to work with him. The day after Trump’s inauguration, the two shook hands in the Blue Room of the White House. “What the president whispered in my ear was, ‘I really look forward to working with you,'” Comey told senators Thursday.
