WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump praised James Comey for his honorable conduct during the 2016 campaign, sought out his loyalty and asked the FBI director to let go an investigation into his former national security adviser, according to memos Comey wrote to document private conversations.
These aspects of Comey’s conversations with Trump before he was fired by the president in May 2017 are detailed in memos the Justice Department turned over Thursday to House committees. The memos track broadly with accounts of those conversations Comey has given in public testimony to Congress and his new bestselling book.
Comey has said he wrote the memos for the FBI’s files to document his conversations with Trump because, he said, he found them troubling. Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Trump asked him in February 2017 to shut down the federal investigation into Michael Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser before being ousted.
Trump “said, ‘I hope you can see your way to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,”’ Comey wrote to document a Feb. 14, 2017, conversation. “I replied by saying, ‘I agree he is a good guy,’ but said no more.”
In a memo dated March 30, Comey describes Trump complaining to him about how the cloud cast by the Russia investigation was impairing his ability to run the country and that he was eager for the FBI director to make clear publicly that the president isn’t under investigation.
The Justice Department agreed to give Congress the Comey memos after House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia threatened to issue a subpoena for them.
The push by Republicans to obtain the memos came after the release this week of Comey’s memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” and several interviews in which he portrays the president as a liar and immoral. Some Republicans complain that Comey has been talking about the memos in his book promotion tour even as the Justice Department withheld them from lawmakers.
According to Comey’s memos, Trump said that he was going to sue Christopher Steele, the British ex-spy who compiled an unverified dossier alleging links between Russia and Trump and his associates.
Republicans said the memos showed that the “cloud” Trump wanted lifted wasn’t Russian interference in the 2016 election, but instead the more salacious allegations in the dossier, which included claims that Russians had tapes of him with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013.
“There were no prostitutes. There were never prostitutes,” Comey quoted Trump as telling him in one memo dated April 19.
Comey also wrote that Trump told him “the hookers thing” from the Steele dossier was nonsense, although the president described how Russian President Vladimir Putin had told him “we have some of the most beautiful hookers in the world.” It’s not clear when Putin told Trump that, Comey added.
In the pivotal one-on-one meeting where Trump urged Comey to let the Flynn inquiry go, Comey said the president also complained about people leaking the details of his conversations with world leaders and suggested reporters might have to be jailed to get them to talk.
“They spend a couple days in jail, make a new friend, and are ready to talk,” Comey quoted the president as saying.
Trump specifically noted Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter jailed after she declined to name her source in the leading of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity. Miller testified for the prosecution against former White House aide Scooter Libby, who was pardoned last week by Trump.
Some aides to House Intelligence and Senate Judiciary members already had been permitted to read the Comey memos in secure settings.
Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that Comey’s “contemporaneous memos provide strong corroborating evidence of everything he said about President Trump — that the president wanted his personal loyalty, that he wanted to end the Russia investigation, and that he wanted Michael Flynn to walk.”
Republicans are seeking to spur debate over whether Comey may have violated Justice Department rules by sharing memos with a law school professor, given that department officials had maintained that they hadn’t yet determined whether they contained sensitive or classified material that prevented disclosing them to Congress.
Goodlatte, joined by Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes of California and Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, wrote a letter last Friday to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein arguing there was no legal basis to withhold the documents.
Nunes, Gowdy and Goodlatte released a statement Thursday night saying the memos showed that Comey was inconsistent and overlooked bias inside the FBI.
“As we have consistently said, rather than making a criminal case for obstruction or interference with an ongoing investigation, these memos would be Defense Exhibit A should such a charge be made,” they said.
——
©2018 Bloomberg News
Visit Bloomberg News at www.bloomberg.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
———
PHOTO (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): COMEY
—————
Topics: t000002953,t000047707,t000138195,t000047682,t000047680,g000362697,g000362669,g000219715
