Trump accused Comey of lying under oath, after Comey said the president had sought him out and pressured him in various ways to drop the investigation into the Trump team's ties to Russian Federation.
"The president made clear in the Rose Garden last week that he would have an announcement shortly", White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Monday.
Comey's testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee painted a damning portrait of Trump's character, and the president waited until Friday morning to break his silence - first in a 6:10 a.m. tweet declaring "total and complete vindication" and then in more detail at the afternoon news conference.
US President Donald Trump goes on the offensive against James Comey, calling him a leaker.
"You're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer, don't worry", Trump said seconds after insisting he was "not hinting at anything".
British inflation rate rises to 4-year high of 2.9 pct
Under final revision of January data, IIP growth has been revised to 3.01 per cent from 3.8 per cent estimated earlier. The pound stayed higher against the dollar after the inflation data and was up 0.3 percent at $1.2702 as of 9:43 a.m.
The House intelligence committee sent a letter Friday asking White House counsel Don McGahn whether any tape recordings or memos of Comey's conversations with the president exist now or had existed in the past.
Following Comey's testimony, "it is important that I have the opportunity to address these matters in the appropriate forum", Sessions wrote to Shelby, who chairs the US Senate appropriations panel he was scheduled to address.
This could be bad news for former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey, who clearly hopes there are tapes of his interactions with Donald Trump: the Secret Service now says it doesn't have any recordings or documentation of conversations within the White House walls, writes the Wall Street Journal. After all, at the time, Comey was a private citizen, sharing an unclassified memo he wrote. Much of the legal controversy surrounding Trump - including whether he obstructed justice - relates to Comey and the conversations he had with the president.
"I think we could work out a way it could be dignified, public, with questions, with Leader McConnell", Schumer told CBS News.
Despite Trump's declaration of "no obstruction", Democrats on Capitol Hill raised the prospect that he may have obstructed justice, based on Comey's testimony, and called for additional investigations. On Friday he said he was "committing the United States to Article 5".
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