"Some of the things that he said just weren't true", added the president who, when asked if he would be willing to speak under oath to special prosecutor Robert Mueller about his version of the encounters, Trump responded: "100 percent". Sure Comey said that he had told Trump that he wasn't under investigation at the time, but Comey also made the point that some on his team thought that was an incorrect characterization and that investigating Trump's campaign inherently meant that Trump could become the focus of the investigation at any time.
Under questioning Thursday, Comey reaffirmed the intelligence community's conclusion that Russian Federation meddled in the election. "I'm not hinting anything".
Trump, who seemed to revel in the suspense he was building, asked again about the tapes told the reporter,"Oh, you're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer".
In light of the FBI's prohibition on publicly sharing documents or information related to ongoing investigations absent prior written authorization, Comey's dual explanations make little sense.
Comey revealed to Congress in March that the bureau was investigating "possible coordination between Russian Federation and the Trump campaign", yet he flatly refused to tell the public, until his testimony on Thursday, that Trump wasn't under investigation.
Earlier, in a characteristic early morning tweet, Trump said, "Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication. and WOW, Comey is a leaker!" "Mr. President, will you testify under oath like Comey?".
With a single tweet, Trump also castigated Comey as "a leaker" for giving an account of his conversation with the president to a law professor who shared it with a news outlet. Trump wrote at 6:10 am.
Comey vs. Trump. Who are we to believe?
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Comey emphasized that the order, "gave the impression that the attorney general [Lynch] was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way the political campaign was describing the same activity, which was inaccurate". The president also said, "Yesterday, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said".
Trump had stayed unusually quiet on Thursday, refraining from weighing in on the testimony gripping the country both on Twitter and at several public appearances.
But the self-imposed silence didn't last.
Politico's Playbook on Friday reported that more lawmakers will likely soon come on board and join the calls to have Trump testify under oath with the president coming "pretty close" to suggesting Comey lied in his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He said that he'd carefully documented his interactions with Trump because he anxious Trump would misrepresent them, and accused the administration of spreading "lies, plain and simple" about the reasons for his firing. Instead, they publicly waived executive privilege and let Comey's testimony proceed. While some Democrats suggested it pointed to obstruction of justice by Trump, Republican members of the panel seized on the fact that the president did not explicitly "direct" the former FBI director to drop the Flynn investigation.
Bondi said she's not ready to say Comey committed a crime by leaking the memo, but it certainly demands an investigation. She called Mr Comey an "honourable individual".
So now that former FBI Director James Comey has appeared before a Senate committee and accused the White House of lying about his firing - and, in the process, raised significant questions about obstruction of justice - what happens next?
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