Former FBI Director James Comey testified before the US Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8 about Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election.
He has a reputation as a straight shooter who wears his sense of personal integrity as a badge of honor, perhaps a little too outwardly, his critics say. His prepared testimony, released 24 hours earlier, was praised by many as tour de force, a dramatic account of four months of dealing with Trump, replete with detail and damning conversation. On Wednesday, two of the country's top intelligence officials went before the Senate Intelligence Committee and refused to discuss the specifics of conversations with the president, frustrating severallawmakers. "James Comey has the quiet confidence and a track record of knowing how to dominate, how to direct the story", said Karen Greenberg, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham University. And those of us who actually know what's going on are not talking about it.
The then-FBI Director was surprised when he arrived to the White House to find that he was having dinner with Trump, solo. Besides his interactions with Trump, Comey also weighed in on a number of different matters including the time that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from FBI's investigation into ties between Russian Federation and members of the Trump campaign, Politico reported.
During his testimony, Mr. Comey confirmed that he did not inform the Attorney General of his concerns about the substance of any one-on-one conversation he had with the President.
"I took it as a direction". By the time he concluded, the panel's chairman, Sen.
Whether Trump's behavior and comment amount to obstruction of justice, however, depends not on how Comey understood the comment, but Trump's intent in delivering it.
Think about that for a moment.
Most voters want President Donald Trump to stop tweeting
On the broader question of whether his tweets are hurting his presidency, 57 percent of voters said yes. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) expressed public astonishment Tuesday after being shown Trump's tweets on Qatar.
"However, on March 2, 2017, the Attorney General's Chief of Staff sent the attached email specifically informing Mr. Comey and other relevant Department officials of the recusal and its parameters, and advising that each of them instruct their staff "not to brief the Attorney General. about, or otherwise involve the Attorney General.in, any matters described", stated DOJ's statement". He wrote memos of other subsequent encounters with Trump.
He was later surprised when Trump suggested he had taped the conversations. Comey replied: "I don't think it's for me to say". "Didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons".
In a startling disclosure, Comey revealed that after his firing he actually tried to spur the special counsel's appointment by giving a damning memo he had written about a meeting with Trump to a friend to release to the media.
At a time when it can be hard, if not disorienting, to distinguish real-life political drama from the latest offerings on HBO or Netflix, Comey blurs the lines. He looks like he walked out of central casting. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked why at some point he didn't just tell the president to back off because the Federal Bureau of Investigation director is an independent actor on the Washington stage. "You're big, you're strong".
"Based only on what we know now in public, a reasonable prosecutor might bring this case against an ordinary person", he said. "I was a bit stunned, and didn't have the presence of mind", he said. "President, this is wrong"'.
Worse, not only did Comey land Lynch in hot water and damage any shred of credibility she may have had left, he also tarnished his own name by not reporting that bombshell last spring. The president told him, "I hope you can let this go", and he took it as more than a mere suggestion.
The Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency concluded in a report declassified in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign not just to undermine confidence in the United States electoral system but to affect the outcome.
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