Early Wednesday, Trump announced his pick to succeed Comey at the FBI - Chrstopher Wray, a former Justice Department official who served as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's lawyer during the George Washington Bridge lane-closing investigation.
He is set to testify under oath Thursday in a public hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
In the statement, Comey says he and Trump dined together privately in January.
"The President began by asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI Director, which I found odd because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I meant to".
"I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo". To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an Federal Bureau of Investigation vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting.
On January 27, Trump and Comey met for a now-infamous dinner. When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the president began by saying, "I want to talk about Mike Flynn". He said the lawmakers will likely try to flesh out Trump's actions. Comey said in the statement "I didn't move, speak or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed". Comey said he became concerned that Trump was trying to create "some sort of patronage relationship".
Trump to nominate ex-Justice Department official to lead FBI
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. "Chris Wray is super smart, a great lawyer and highly experienced". Discussing the group's approach, Wray told Law360, "It's kind of a "keep calm and tackle hard" philosophy".
"He then said, 'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go".
In essence, Comey's written testimony confirms a key claim that Trump has made - that three times, Comey told the president he was not under investigation. Richard Burr of North Carolina, said he would focus Wednesday on reauthorizing a key portion of a US surveillance law that is set to expire later this year.
Comey's statement came hours after two top United States spy agency chiefs skirted questions from the Senate panel about whether the president also "asked" them to intervene in the Flynn probe, while saying they never felt pressured to do so. "I replied that he should give that 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". Sessions "did not reply".
An April 11 phone call, in which the president requested that Comey "get out" that Trump was not personally under investigation.
In it Comey made clear he was uncomfortable discussing an ongoing investigation with the president, even as he assured Trump that he himself was not a target of the probe.
The back-to-back hearings come as the White House grapples with the fallout from Comey's firing, which led to the appointment of a special counsel to take over the Russian Federation investigation in an effort to prevent even the appearance of Oval Office interference. "He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him", Comey wrote. Comey replied that he could offer his honesty, and that when Trump said he wanted "honest loyalty", Comey answered, Comey paused and said, "You will get that from me".
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