Fired FBI director James Comey has said that it was "very disturbing" that President Trump asked him to stop probing the Russian Federation links of one of his top aide.
"I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night, because it didn't dawn on me originally, there might be corroboration, a tape", Comey said. "Why would you kick the attorney general, the vice president, the chief of staff out to talk to me?"
That came almost a decade after Comey, whom Trump recently derided as "a showboat", first stepped onto the national stage with testimony about his hospital visit with the attorney general to prevent the reauthorization of a domestic surveillance program. And the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director's detailed notes from conversations with Trump have been turned over to the special counsel.
Although Manchin declined to go into specifics, citing security clearance concerns, he said Comey answered all the questions in private that he could not answer at the public hearing. But he said he believed Trump was ordering him to cease an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russian officials.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia asked Comey the key question: "Do you believe this rises to obstruction of justice?".
"Obstruction of justice is clearly on the minds of a lot of people and I think it damages the president politically", he said.
In reality, Comey shared the memo with his friend days after Trump tweeted suggesting there may be tapes of their conversations, and the day after he shared the information, it was referenced by The New York Times.
Comey: Not a question I can answer in open setting, Mr. Chairman.
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Comey's one-on-one dinner with Trump on January 27, in which the president asked for his loyalty, occurred just after the White House was briefed on the investigation of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. And he was a little bit John Dean, not quite declaring a cancer on the presidency but pronouncing himself very much "shocked and troubled" by what he perceived as Trump's repeated efforts to get him to ease off the FBI's investigation into Russia's role in the 2016 election.
The testimony would serve to strengthen Mr Comey's credibility with congress, Mr Gerhardt said, possibly at the expense of the president.
At one point he practically dared Mr Trump to release any recordings of their conversations, a prospect president once alluded to in a tweet. What is the difference in being in the room alone with him and talking to him on the phone alone?"); whether he found it odd that Trump asked him to have dinner one-on-one ("How unusual is it to have a one-on-one dinner with the president? Comey said he informed the new deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, about Trump's line-crossing, but nothing seemed to happen. "President, this is wrong?'" "Maybe if I were stronger I would have. I was so stunned by the conversation I just took it in". Clinton has blamed her defeat on Comey's October 28 announcement that he was re-opening the investigation of her email practices.
"I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, and so I thought it really important to document".
Mr Comey recalled that Mr Trump and the White House gave shifting explanations for why he was dismissed, first saying it was over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe previous year, then saying it was the Russian Federation investigation, and finally declaring Mr Comey was a poor leader disliked by the FBI staff.
"We will establish the facts separate from rampant speculation and lay them out for the American people to make their own judgment", he said. "So that, to me, as an investigator, is a significant fact". Trump issued his warning online on May 12, three days after Comey was sacked and four days before the newspaper reported on the information in the memo, which was recounted by Comey associates.
Under questioning Thursday, Comey strongly asserted the intelligence community's conclusion that Russian Federation did indeed meddle in the 2016 election.
"There should be no fuzz on this".
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