7 eye-popping revelations from James Comey's extraordinary statement
This is just remarkable
Hours ahead of fired FBI Director James Comey's congressional hearing Thursday morning, the Senate Intelligence Committee released an early preview of Comey's opening statement. The statement, in which Comey confirms several previous leaks and media reports surrounding President Trump's conversations with Comey regarding the ongoing Russia probe, also provides extraordinary atmospheric details on these conversations, beginning with their Jan. 11 meeting at Trump Tower, and running through their final phone call on April 11.
Trump fired Comey on May 9.
Here are seven of the juiciest bits from the opening statement of Comey's highly anticipated congressional hearing, which starts Thursday at 10 a.m. ET.
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1. Trump pressured Comey to promise "loyalty."
"I need loyalty, I expect loyalty," Trump told Comey during a Jan. 27 dinner.
Comey said he "didn't speak move, or change [his] facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed." "We simply looked at each other in silence," Comey recounted.
2. Trump is obsessed with the idea the Russia investigation is putting a "cloud" over his presidency.
On March 30, Trump called Comey complaining that the Russia investigation was "'a cloud' that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country." He wanted to know what could be done to "lift the cloud" because it "was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country."
Trump brought the "cloud" up again in his April 11 phone call with Comey, in which Trump reiterated "'the cloud' was getting in the way of his ability to do the job," Comey wrote.
3. Trump insisted that he was not "involved with hookers in Russia."
"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 account of his March 30 phone call with Trump. (This was an apparent reference to an unverified dossier, which, among other allegations, claimed that Trump's "conduct in Moscow … included perverted sexual acts which have been arranged/monitored by the [Russian security agency] FSB.")
4. Trump pushed Comey to "let go" of the investigation into ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey recalled that Trump started talking to him about Flynn as soon as they were alone after a Feb. 14 meeting in the Oval Office:
5. Comey got suckered into that one-on-one dinner with Trump.
6. Trump repeatedly badgered Comey to "get out" that the FBI wasn't personally investigating him.
Trump urged Comey during more than one conversation to find a way to let the public know that the ongoing FBI investigation into the Trump team's ties to Russian election meddling didn't personally target Trump. "He repeatedly told me, 'We need to get that fact out,'" Comey wrote. The fired FBI director noted that he "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."
7. In their final phone call, Trump ominously reminded Comey of "that thing" they had.
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