Comey details Trump meetings in opening statement
Former FBI Director James Comey provides a dramatic and detailed account of his meetings with President Trump in an opening statement released the afternoon before his highly anticipated testimony to Congress on Thursday.
In a statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which runs seven pages, Comey confirms reports that Trump asked him to “let go” of the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey also recounts multiple conversations with Trump in the statement, including one talk in which the president asked him to “lift the cloud” of the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the election and alleged ties between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.
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In another conversation, which took place during a January dinner at the White House, Comey confirms that the president asked him for his loyalty.
“I need loyalty. I expect loyalty,” Trump said, according to Comey.
Comey said he didn’t respond to Trump’s remark, but the president returned to the subject later in the dinner, again repeating that he needed loyalty.
Ultimately, Comey allowed that Trump would get “honesty loyalty” from him.
“The term — honesty loyalty — had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect,” Comey says in his testimony.
In a discussion following Comey’s March 20 disclosure of the existence of the investigation, Comey will testify, he told the president that he had informed congressional leadership on which individuals were currently under investigation. The president made repeated requests that Comey publicly counter the narrative that he himself was under personal investigation, according to the dismissed director.
“I did not tell the president that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change,” Comey said in the statement.
In his final interaction with the president, on April 11, the president called on Comey to follow up on that request.
“Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know,” Comey reported the president saying.
“I did not reply or ask him what he meant by ‘that thing,'” Comey wrote.
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