Comey's testimony is sure to shock many intelligence community members, who refuted the idea that the former director would have violated procedure by telling the president about the status of any investigation, existent or nonexistent.
Comey in his prepared testimony describes a cryptic meeting with Trump on January 27, when Trump made the comments about loyalty. During that meeting, Comey says Mr. Trump asked multiple times for the FBI to publicly say that there was no direct investigation of the President. "I explained that we had briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and that we had told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump", reads the statement.
Comey is scheduled to give his testimony before the Senate committee Thursday.
In the March phone call, Mr. Trump said he had nothing to do with Russia and had not been involved with prostitutes in Russia "and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia".
Mr. Comey, who was confirmed in 2013, said he had not written similar memos for his interactions with President Barack Obama, whom he met privately with twice when Mr. Obama was in office. "That is literally farcical", said one of Comey's associates told The Wall Street Journal regarding Trump's claims. He is a good guy. Comey said he replied that he wanted to serve out his ten-year term and "was not on anybody's side politically". "I hope you can let this go, '" Comey says, according to the prepared remarks.
Key quotes from James Comey's testimony to Congress
And, of course, we now know that when Comey didn't "lift the cloud" or "let go" of the Flynn matter, the president fired him. He says he assured Trump three different times, the first instance coming in a January 6 meeting a Trump Tower.
"To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an F.B.I. vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting", Mr. Comey said.
Comey, in his opening statement, said Trump told him "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty" during their first dinner in January.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump announced that he planned to nominate Christopher Wray, a former Justice Department official, as Comey's successor.
This is an interesting and somewhat confusing part of the whole mystery surrounding the Russian Federation investigation, but ultimately, it doesn't matter much that Comey divulged this information to Trump. Mr. Comey said he advised the president to give the request "careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren't, and because it was very hard to prove a negative". He says Trump also volunteered that "he had nothing to do with Russian Federation, had not been involved with hookers in Russian Federation, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia" - referencing an unverified intelligence dossier detailing compromising information Moscow had allegedly collected on Trump.
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