Comey: Trump sought to ‘lift the cloud’ of investigation
WASHINGTON — Fired FBI Director James Comey will testify under oath Thursday that President Donald Trump repeatedly pressed him for his “loyalty” and directly pushed him to “lift the cloud” of investigation shadowing his White House by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the probe into his campaign’s Russia ties.
Comey’s detailed and vivid recollections of his one-on-one conversations with Trump were revealed in seven pages of prepared testimony released Wednesday, the day before his much-anticipated appearance before the Senate intelligence committee.
His remarks paint a picture of an FBI director so disconcerted by his interactions with the president that he began keeping written memos of their private discussions. He’ll tell lawmakers he believed the president was trying to create a “patronage relationship” with him and describe in detail an Oval Office meeting in which Trump urged him not to investigate ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with Russian officials.
But the ex-FBI director also will validate Trump’s assertion that he was not personally a target of the federal counterintelligence investigation into possible campaign collusion with Russia. Comey says he did offer the president that “assurance,” but resisted Trump’s appeals to make that information public.